The Mother’s Day Post
Mother’s Day is celebrated all over the world at various times in Spring to, obviously, honor one’s mother. In the United States, Anna Jarvis founded the day we know now that is celebrated on the second Sunday of May, in 1908. By 1914 it was made a National Holiday. By Jarvis’ death, she was renouncing her own holiday as having become too commercialized.
It is too commercialized. But, who wants to abolish a holiday that celebrates ones mom? No one. Its not like Valentines when you can commit to showing your partner you love them every day of the year. A lot of children (especially adults) don’t live anywhere near their mothers, and this is a good day to (of all days) let them know that you’re still thinking of them even from afar.
My proposal? Untraditional gifts. Token mother’s day gifts come in the form of Hallmark Cards and flowers. That’s all well and good, and if your mother loves those things, by all means, get them for her. But get her something more as well.
Always, I’m a fan of books, afterall I write a book blog. There’s always something special to be found at a bookstore. Whether its the latest and greatest of a beloved series, a funny gift book, a sappy gift book, a history book on a topic of interest that you both share, music, movies, or just a gift card so she can go have some time to herself and pick out something of her own choosing, there’s something for everyone at a bookstore.
For Dads helping small children, a newer (but not too new) overlooked title is Tomie DePaola’s My Mother Is So Smart. DePaola has been an award winning children’s author for years, but even I didn’t know this 2010 publication existed until I stumbled across in the library the other day. Its beautiful, as are all his books, and celebrates the love and awe he had for his mother as a child. Its sweet, and perfect for a young mother to read to her toddler… although I did notice how many things I’ve neglected to master as a mom, like the perfect cookie recipe, and the uncanny ability to always know why my child is crying.
Great Gift #2: I dream of having a cleaning service come through my house once a year. I keep a fairly clean house. I actually enjoy cleaning, when I find the time and energy to clean up blocks and toys that have been strewn everywhere for the 300th time that day. But the idea of having a cleaning crew come in every Spring and scrub my base boards, toilets, showers, and maybe also have my AC ducts cleaned out – that would be the BEST mother’s day gift EVER. (Aside from someone purchasing and installing all my hardwood floors over night without any assistance from me… that would be even better, but a little less practical as a mother’s day gift.) If this awesome treat proved unobtainable, I might settle for lawn fairies to come weed my gardens in the middle of the night.
Shop AKKlemm.scentsy.us
Great Gift #3: After books and a laziness enabler, I choose Scentsy products. I love candles and fabulous smells, but the wickless candle deal with mood lighting has proven to be the best choice when a toddler is running all over the place. When (I say when NOT if) your kid decides to lather themselves in hot candle wax and try to put every blessed thing you own under wax treatment, you want it to be low heat, no flame, I promise. My favorite spring scents available this year are Pixie and Cerise. The Just Breathe is also quite excellent and one of my year round favorites of all time. But you know your Mom and/or Wife, get what she likes.
Great Gift #4: Reloadable Starbucks gift cards. Who doesn’t practically live at Starbucks, or would if they could? Its become an American staple. Cliche, over-rated, over-priced, I agree, but hey, its pretty darn good coffee available on every street corner, I’ll take it. The reloadable gift cards are pretty sweet. Reload them a few times and you are an upgraded customer with free birthday drinks, free syrup add ons, free cups of coffee with your bean purchases, the list goes on. Buy the mother in your life a gift card and take the time to reload it for her a few times before the year is up and BAM! she is one happy caffeined lady.
Whatever you do, be sure to enjoy the day. Sundays should be lovely days anyway, but I hope one day Ayla will love to spend a lazy Sunday with me, reading, having coffee, or maybe picnicing in the sun if the weather is nice.
Library Living
Beauty and the Beast, Disney
Every book lover has dreamed of one day living in a library.
Here is the story of a man who did.
(Prior to attending Baylor University, Benny was a Dallas Baptist University student with me. He’s a fabulous guy, with some really unique life experiences.)
Library Living: Baylor alumnus ran low on cash, used study carrel for home
Oct. 2, 2009
By Olga Gladtskov Ball Reporter
Not many Baylor students can say that they have lived in the library for six months, spent a night in a Mexican jail or organized a campaign to bring Kinky Friedman onto the Baylor campus. Baylor alumnus Benny Barrett did all of it, and more, during his time at Baylor.
Barrett’s journey to Baylor began when Dr. Gary Cook, the president of Dallas Baptist University, encouraged Barrett to go on a campus visit to Baylor to consider transferring. While on his visit, Barrett ran into Dr. Robert Sloan, then chancellor of Baylor.
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Jed Dean | Photo EditorBenny Barrett, former Baylor student who had to choose between secretly living inside Moody Memorial library or leaving Baylor, rests his head against the very carrel he lived in for almost two semesters. |
“I just walked up to him and ask him if he was Dr. Sloan because he looked like what I imagined he would look like,” Barrett said. Barrett told Sloan that he had just met an old friend of Sloan’s the week before. Sloan and Barrett discussed the friend, and Sloan invited Barrett to meet with him the next week. After the meeting, Barrett decided to attend Baylor.
Once at Baylor, Barrett ran into financial problems, causing him to research a new place to live: Moody Memorial Library. Barrett began his research in April 2006 and moved all of his belongings to his study carrel in May.
“I would show up to tests an hour late during summer session because the library opened at 9 and had to give some lame excuse about oversleeping,” Barrett said. For Barrett, the most difficult time in the library during the summer was during Fourth of July weekend, where he was not able to leave for days because the library closed for the holiday.
When the fall semester began, Barrett began to work at the library from 4 to 8 a.m. He would then sleep inside his carrel for a few hours before class.
“The libraries are important havens for study and respite, and my faculty, staff and I work hard to make them pleasant and safe student-friendly spaces,” said Pattie Orr, dean of university libraries. “I was not here at Baylor when Benny was in this difficult situation, but if I had been I would have wanted to reach out to him to see how we could help.”
Orr also said that Barrett was the only case of someone living in the library that she has heard.
“I lost weight,” Barrett said. “My eyes were always bloodshot. I would sometimes wear sunglass to class to hide it.”
Barrett hid his food, mostly consisting of Ramen noodles, behind his books. He also had a hot water heater and a sleeping bag hidden in his carrel. Barrett stopped sleeping at the library in December, when Dr. Scott Moore, associate professor in Great Texts, called him into his office.
“I explained my living arrangements to him and he got me placed in a dorm for the rest of the semester,” Barrett said. Prior to the meeting with the professor, Barrett had only told a few friends about his living conditions.
Moore said he was horrified when he found out that Barrett was living in the library. He then contacted others to help Barrett move into a dorm.
“I just got the ball rolling,” Moore said. “I called Frank Shushok (who supervised housing arrangements at the time) and said we’ve got to find this guy a dorm room. Frank called Jackie Diaz in financial aid and the folks in Campus Living and Learning, and they did all the work.”
“Friends invited me to live with them, but I didn’t want to be a leech,” Barrett said. Barrett was given a loan at the end of the semester to pay for the rest of his education.
“I found out about Benny’s secret lair in the library only from my colleague Scott Moore, who also told me that Benny was showering and changing clothes at the Student Life Center, Said Ralph Wood, university professor of theology and literature. “Moore made sure that Benny was able to get a scholarship that paid more than tuition alone.”
During his semester in the library, Barrett spent a night in a Mexican jail with his former roommate Osione Itegboje. Itegboje took Barrett to Mexico with him so that Itegboje, who is from Nigeria, could renew his visa. However, the pair was sent to jail when a guard discovered that Itegboje lacked a Mexican visa.
“It was a crazy experience,” Barrett said. “A whirlwind of a weekend.”
Itegboje and Barrett were released the next day and told that they could not enter Mexico for a year, under the threat of six months in a Mexican prison.
While on campus, Barrett fought another battle — governmental candidate, novelist and country singer Kinky Friedman had asked Barrett if he could arrange for him to speak on campus. Barrett met Friedman at a Willie Nelson concert, and Friedman had expressed interest in speaking at Baylor. Barrett then founded Baylor Independents and began the process to get Friedman to Baylor.
“I have never been called to the principal’s office, Pat Neff, so many times,” Barrett said, “No one wanted him to speak on campus.” Barrett convinced administrators that if Friedman was not allowed to speak, Baylor would be showing favoritism toward Governor Rick Perry, who had already spoken at Chapel.
“They finally let him come on campus but wouldn’t let me have a reception for him so I had it at the Judge Baylor House, which isn’t associated with Baylor, but many people thought it was when they came,” Barrett said. The Noze brothers awarded Friedman with the honor of “Yellow Noze of Texas.”
Barrett, who graduated in 2008, still visits campus often, walking his teacup Chihuahua, Malcolm X, and spending time at his favorite place on campus: the library.
“Would that there were more Benny Barretts,” Wood said.
http://www.baylor.edu/lariat/news.php?action=story&story=62329
Somebody That I *Still* Know
“Somebody That I Used To Know”
(feat. Kimbra)
[Gotye:]
Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it’s an ache I still remember
You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I’ll admit that I was glad it was over
But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don’t even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and it feels so rough
No you didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know
[Kimbra:]
Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I’d done
But I don’t wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go
And I wouldn’t catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know
[Gotye:]
But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don’t even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and it feels so rough
And you didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know
[x2]
Somebody
(I used to know)
Somebody
(Now you’re just somebody that I used to know)
(I used to know)
(That I used to know)
(I used to know)
Somebody
This song has just recently blown up all over the Houston area. I hear it on the radio often, I periodically go to You Tube and watch the music video. It’s in my head, I can’t get it out, and I’m ok with that because it’s beautiful.
I played it for my sister and she said, “It’s so true, that’s how it is.” All I could think was: How odd, I didn’t expect that reaction. Until that moment, I had been completely in love with the song, and found it sad, but had never thought about the affect the lyrics might have on others. Because, for me, it has never been that way.
I’ve taken the time to put the lyrics on my blog, and talk about this song, because it’s one of the few songs I’ve heard in a long time that has made me count my blessings. I can hear that song and sing it loudly in the car and proudly and gratefully know that the only true ex-boyfriend I have, is still my friend, and so is his wife. (I feel as though I can safely exclude those who I casually ‘dated’ from this post.)
I am thankful of my choices in life. I only looked for relationships in people that I already called friend, so that when they ended or didn’t work out, it was all ok because we had a friendship to fall back on. There was no disappearing into the abyss; or pretending like we didn’t care about each other, we respect each other too much to behave that way. We were able to honestly admit to ourselves that we weren’t right for each other and that each one was in love with somebody else, and look where that got us! We are each happily married to our somebody else.
Having now thought about it in regards to other people, my empathy kicks in and Gotye now brings tears to my eyes. But they aren’t my tears, they are tears for all the broken people. My advice to the world? Think about this song before you haphazardly jump into dating relationships, because marriage is awesome, but dating really sucks.
If you haven’t seen it, watch the video, it’s beautiful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVNT4wvIGY
Walk Off The Earth also does an amazing cover.
The Enrichment of Eric Carle (at Half Price)
Today is Wednesday. Wednesday has a new ring to it now that I’m hosting story time every week at 10:30 am on behalf of Half Price Books in the Humble location’s Half Pint section.
It was a quiet crowd today, only three children munching on the provided snack, listening to Duckie Duck by Kate Toms and Mister Seahorse by Eric Carle, to name a few. It is always a pleasure seeing the younger crowd fall in love with books and enjoy a calming sit down with the work of our favorite authors, but today I found myself doing what I used to love best about working in a bookstore again – I was educating.
Kids and parents alike enjoy someone guiding them in their discoveries, just as when I am shopping, I too love for retailers to point out their favorites, clerks to tell me what they’ve been reading lately. Today as I read Mister Seahorse, I got to share the fact that Eric Carle has a museum in Massachusetts, a fact few families seem to know down here in Texas, but almost all respond with wide eyes and dropped jaws. ‘That sounds amazing!’ I often hear people saying. I agree, and I plan to take my daughter there one day on a vacation.
The beauty of The Eric Carle Museum, which feeds my desire to take my child there, aside from the art itself, is their mission:
The mission of The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art is to inspire, especially in children and their families, an appreciation for and an understanding of the art of the picture book. In fulfilling our mission, we aspire to build bridges to an appreciation of art of every kind and to provide an enriching, dynamic, and supportive context for the development of literacy. We deliver this mission by collecting, presenting and celebrating the art of the picture book from around the world and by providing interactive experiences and programs that are engaging and educational.
Humble HPB Half Pint Section
That same mission, building a bridge of art appreciation and developing literacy, is how I choose my child’s books in the first place. It’s not enough to have an amazing story but boring art, it’s also not enough to have amazing illustrations and a terrible story. The building blocks for enriching a child’s mind are in a smooth marriage of those two things and Eric Carle has always seemed to manage that joining.
I hope, by choosing books to read and presenting them to children each week as part of my Event Coordinating duties, Half Price Books can be a venue for which I can share these kinds of books with new minds, and this mission with other parents – at half the price.
The Beautiful World of Bookmarks
Most avid readers I know are exceptionally prone to stuffing anything handy into the pages of their books to mark their place. Receipts, clean napkins, Christmas cards, baby announcements, these are the usual suspects at my house. On rare occasions I’ve been known to dog ear something, but it’s a cardinal sin I always regret later. But, once a year or so, I treat myself to shiny, new, beautiful bookmarks intended for marking books.
When I go about hunting down my treats, my usual haunts are: Bryan Collins, Barnes & Noble and Half Price Books.
Bookmarks by Bryan Collins
If you’ve been reading my blog for longer than five minutes, you are well aware of my stalker-like obsession for all Bryan Collins art. And as I don’t always have the money I’d like to spend on his art, I do the best I can to advertise its wonderfulness every chance I get. One of my favorite things about his endeavors as an artist, is that if you are really broke, you can always get some of his really amazing work in a bookmark format, which is cheap… as in have a great value. They’re about $4.00, but they are pretty sturdy. I bought some a few years ago and they still look minty new. What I like even more is that they have a matte finish, not a cheap glossy finish. They’re fabulous and you can buy them here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/57026432/bookmark-of-if-only-she-would-have. I also have a link on the right, below my blog roll, to his Etsy site, so if you want to find him later, you don’t have to sift through all my blog posts to do so.
My other bookmark purchases are those magnetic bookmarks, the ones that clip to the page with a magnet and usually feature great pictures. I’m a little obsessive and like to make whichever one I’m using match the theme of the book if I can. This is a fun idea when they are brand new, but by the end of their days, its more of a “Which one is still in tact?” issue. You can get those on Amazon.com
Finally, I’m in love with the tasseled bookmarks available at Half Price Books. They are 49 cents and wonderful. Classic, simple, great designs, inexpensive. You can’t go wrong and they’re usually right by the register. I recently picked up one with a cute, little owl illustration. How do you pass up a cartoon owl?
So book-aholics! Treat yourself to a bookmark, and throw away those tattered sheets of paper, even if its only for a week before you find library due date slips stashed between the pages of your #FridayRead, its worth the occasional cleanse.
“Bad” Habits and Edna
I have a really bad habit, that I have no intention of breaking, of judging books at a glance, by their cover. This habit our parents and grandparents warned us against, is justified to me by two things: my marketing degree and a blurb Paul Collins wrote in his book Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books
Regardless of that justification, it has led me to some horrible mistakes (I thought Rudolf Steiner
Directly, it led me to Tanya Egan Gibson
You see, I once belonged to an online book club. It was lovely place that I adored, where as a group, we read lots of British things. We had fabulous nicknames (I was Lady Klemm of Deasa Manor) and were only required to read the selections and maintain our character. At first… later there were a whole host of requirements, like reading and participating more each year than you did the last and agreeing with the admin of the group on every particular. I was kicked out- “expunged” the admin liked to call it – indirectly for getting pregnant and having a child, directly for knowing the proper definitions of literary terms.
In this group, the Mitford Sisters
You will laugh when I reveal that instead of Nancy Mitford, I had grabbed a book by… wait for it….
but didn’t realize this until months later as I was reading through my TBR pile, something every voracious reader has stashed about the house and never seems to diminish no matter how quickly you pluck through it.
Alas! It was a biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford. Well, who is this? I asked myself. I can’t read a biography on a person without reading their work first. I want to have a feel for the quotes, I want to understand their mood they were in while writing my favorite piece, and I can’t get the full picture without having a favorite piece!
So, back to the bookstore I went and found myself a hardback of Edna’s poems, a collected works. It’s been heavenly. Reading her poetry has made for some of the sweetest moments with my baby.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Late at night, when she’s teething and can’t sleep, we rock in the glider and in the lamplight of my library I whisper lines from Edna. When the kiddo is at her crankiest, she sometimes crawls into the chair ahead of me and points to the white spine, she is aware that she is soothed by the rhythm of these poems. When it’s raining, like today, and we’re feeling scratchy and feverish, all the singing and hot tea in the world is no match in comparison to the calm that is offered by reading Edna aloud.
Poetry is not something I read often; it’s not my “go to” genre. But I appreciate it, usually the sarcastic and simple like William Carlos Williams, a pre-teen favorite of mine. Edna St.Vincent Millay has changed that for me, I think. I’m prepared to seek out more poetry in the future, especially as I raise this kid, my beautiful daughter, in hopefully the most literary household anyone has ever seen.
Coffee Dating and Honey Shacks
The Coffee Date
Love Coffee by Ahmed Rabea
I’ve been watching a lot of comedians on Netflix lately, and inevitably each one will have a few minutes devoted to dogging the Coffee Date. Women will comically lament: Shouldn’t a man spend money on dinner? What’s with only shelling out a few bucks for coffee? Men talk about how it’s the worst idea ever because you’ll both have bad breath and diarrhea. And so on. I always laugh, because I see their point – kind of, and of course, they say it in a way that forces one to laugh – which is why they get paid to do what they do. But when all is said and done, I think: I love coffee dates. I loved them when I was dating, and I love them now that I’m married.
See, the coffee date is the perfect date. You just met someone; you don’t know them well enough to know whether you’d like to suffer through dinner. You can dodge out of a coffee date 10 minutes in, and its no big deal, you only met for coffee after all. Not so with a dinner date, where you have to at least wait for the bill to be dropped off, or you’d be considered an absolute jerk. Or, if things are going well, you can sit for hours and no one cares, you can have intimate conversations in typically comfy chairs in a very cozy environment. And with most coffee shops, if you get hungry while you’re there, its easy to order something to snack on for a bit without gorging yourself on food. It also offers the easiest chance to turn coffee into something more than coffee: We’ve enjoyed this coffee, let’s take a walk. After dinner walks tend to be a bit awkward and anticlimactic. You’ve already eaten too much, your outfit doesn’t fit the way it did when you got in, and you’re more likely to have to pee halfway through the walk, because you already sat through dinner and now you’re digesting.
I find coffee dates exceptionally more interesting and better for ‘dating’ than even the movie date. The movie date, to me, is the worst kind of date. This date is the date that says, ‘I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to know you, I just want to put in two hours of time so I don’t look like a slut when I make out with you.’ It says: I don’t put much time into thinking, and just want to sit with you in a dark room, where I can cop a feel. It says: my thoughts on dating haven’t progressed passed high school. Movie dates are for married people, who don’t need to talk, and just want to get out of the house for a change of pace, not for people just starting out.
But if you’re truly trying to get to know someone, which is what ‘dating’ is supposed to be, getting together for coffee is awesome. It’s possible that it’s just the book nerd in me, and we tend to be coffee/tea folk, but I just really feel like half ofAmericalooks for the wrong thing when they date. ‘How much money is he spending on me?’ is just not a suitable date night criteria.
Side Note for My Tea People
I was contemplating this blog rant on my way home from church today when I stopped at my local honey stand. As a huge coffee and tea drinker, I go through a lot of honey. What’s tea without honey? And in doing so, I’ve chosen to “support my local bees” as Bob’s sign proudly announces at the bee shack on Kuykendahl and Spring Cypress.
The bees are from A.C. Bees, here in Spring, and the stand is Bob’s Local Honey. The honey is the best you can buy, and when you bring his glass jars back, he’ll give you a $1/ jar cash or towards a purchase. My family goes through tons of this stuff, so I wanted to share. He’s there at the stand Tuesday through Sunday and his phone number is 713-628-4774, call if you have any questions.
Evenings With Agatha
Title:Murder on the Links
Author: Agatha Christie
Genre: Mystery
Length: 173 pages
One of the most wonderful parts of January has been the cold – and Agatha Christie. At the start of the year, I committed myself to a 23 month plan to read all of the Agatha Christie Crime Collection, of which I own a beautiful black and red leather set.
The picture may be old, but its the same fireside.
In the evenings, my daughter and I light the fire in the fireplace, turn on the radio (its one of those old school looking wooden ones from Target, complete with turntable, cd player, and tape deck) and jazz immediately warms the living room with sound.
I keep my Scentsy burners on constantly and this month we’ve had a lot of Honey Peared Cider, Weathered Leather, and Cozy Fireside going.
Ayla, my daughter, is 14 months old. The jazz comes on and suddenly its dancing time! We sway and swing until the tea kettle is ready (it doesn’t whistle to my utter chagrin), and then curl up together and I read aloud the selected Agatha Christie for the evening.
This is the one time of day that we spend in the living room, most of our ‘living’ happens in the library where all my books and Ayla’s play mats are. How silly of us that our living room is where we do all our reading on death and murder.
This arrangement is everything I imagined would be wonderful about spending time with my daughter, and Agatha always lives up to her end of the deal, with all the excitement of a three ring circus.
In this second installment of the Poirot investigations, Poirot cleverly and humorously antagonizes other detectives as he and the narrator, Hastings, solve the crime together. If I said anything more, I would give away all the best parts!
Brick and Mortar vs. The Online World
Featuring the Best Bookstores inTexas
Despite being an Amazon.com affiliate, I truly believe in being a patron of a brick and mortar bookstore. In my mind, online sales are a necessary evil for the true bibliophile who cannot afford to travel toWalesfrom theUnited Statesto pick up a copy of the next book in the Scarlet Pimpernel series. (I shop abebooks.com every three or four months for this exact purpose.) Online sales are for that student looking for the cheapest textbook because its that or don’t eat for a month, and where not eating for a day or two is fathomable, not eating for a whole month would counter the act of trying to improve your mind. I shop online if I’m gravely ill and cannot expose my disgusting germs to the outside world for a few weeks and am dying to read that biography that is just obscure enough that my favorite stores wont have it in stock for months anyway. I shop Amazon.com for Paul Collins books on the regular, because they are readily available there, but most his stuff is out of print and isn’t carried by Barnes & Noble (I really like the one at the Woodlands mall) and rarely seen at most used stores.
For this reason, I am signing paperwork on Tuesday to be an Event Coordinator at my local Half Price Books (Humble), my favorite family owned bookstore in the country and the easiest store to shop inTexas. I’d like nothing more than to generate traffic at a place I love while mostly still being a stay at home mom, as this job is only 20 hrs. a month and is a bit like a consulting gig.
That being said, Half Price Books isn’t the only great bookstore inTexas. I’m also a huge fan of Murder By the Book inHouston, mostly for the fact that they have become world famous and still manage to be the coziest place in the world. Murder By the Book is right around the corner from a Half Price Books, and though I stop at HPB first, if they don’t have the latest and greatest in stock yet, I have no problem popping over and buying a current pub if I have to. The real life story to this hypothetical scenario being when Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s Angel Game was first released.
Murder By the Book is great, but they are a bit of a drive for me. So when I want the same cozy atmosphere, comfy chairs, and intimate shelving units, but not the drive, another favorite place for me is Good Books in the Woods in Spring, off Oak Ridge, almost to the Woodlands. It’s a quiet little gem tucked away literally in the woods, a house turned bookstore. They have their own book clubs and writing workshops. They specialize in first editions, signed copies, and all that is old and interesting, but there are some run of the mill things you can find there too. It’s a bit more expensive than HPB on most days, but sometimes worth it if HPB doesn’t happen to have what you’re looking for and you’re too impatient to wait for it to be shipped to you. I say “a bit more expensive,” but their prices are always reasonable, I’m just used to my beloved HPB clearance section. (Visit Good Books in the Woods here: http://www.goodbooksinthewoods.com/)
As I’m headed back home, often severely hungry because I’m always hungry, on the southbound side of 45 you can also find Once and Again Books, often mistaken as an HPB because its quite similar. Honestly, I only shop there because its next to my favorite food joint: The Olive Oil, fabulous Greek Food. And it’s on the way home. But its nice, its clean, and in good order.
Now for myDallaspeeps:
I’m absolutely, positively in love with the Recycled Bookstore inDenton. The entire shopping experience happens, literally, in layers. There are stairs and cubbies and closets, all brimming with organized, clean, lovely used books. They also function in an old school fashion and will negotiate prices with you, something most stores just can’t do anymore. For my every day Dallas shopping, I stick to all the near by Half Price Books locations peppered all over the city, but on special day trips up the highway, a bookstore in an old Opera House is just the thing.
As for Dallas Half Price Books locations (and there are quite a few!), my favorites are of course the flagship for its enormity and coffee shop, and the Cedar Hill location for having been my college haunt and my first introduction to Half Price Books at all.
Now, Texans, really… with all these just moments away, why would you go online to shop unless you absolutely had to? Amazon.com, abebooks.com, hpbmarketplace.com, all those fabulous .com bookstore – are tools when you need them, not your first go to.
Exposure is Everything
My whole life I have been enthralled by the world of books. As a child, I was an avid reader the school librarian could not keep appeased. I lived in the worlds of Laura Ingalls, L.M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and more. Although I went to college to study business, as soon as I was out I sought a position in a bookstore; my dream was to run the literature section, and I did. I worked there for some years, fully stocked up my home collection, became the inventory manager, but then had a baby and so left the company.
We have 17 overflowing bookshelves in our house and books stacked on every available end table in between. I have been gathering up children’s titles throughout my pregnancy until now for my daughter, preparing for a lust of the written word comparable to mine.
People keep warning me that she may not want to read, she may not like it like I do. They keep telling me I cannot force my child to enjoy my hobbies.
I am not forcing her. I am making the written word available. She sees books everywhere, she sees people enjoying books everywhere. In addition to our own collection that we read from every day, we visit the public library for group readings and she sees people outside her family unit gathering to enjoy a book.
My daughter is one year old, and already she often chooses Eric Carle over a stuffed animal. She brings me Rainbow Fish and expects me to read it aloud while she sorts her blocks. It seems sometimes as though she is not actually listening, just sorting her belongings, until I stop reading and she looks up and points at the book. My daughter sorts through her picture books and flips through the pages, she even has her own little cushioned rocking chair she climbs into to do it. She rocks and pretends to read while I lounge and read in our library in our house.
My daughter loves books, and I am both amazed and proud. I implore the world to make books available to their children from a young age. Read aloud to them, they cannot help but be interested and thirsty for stories and knowledge.
Anakalian Whims 