Men Are Jerks, Women Are PsychoticAug 04 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Buying used books can be discouraging and hard work, but it can also be a fun way to spend an afternoon.
Let's start with the bottom line, shall we? Just to shake things up a bit. If you are going to purchase used books, you are going to spend a lot of hours sifting through a lot of crap, often to turn up with nothing worth bothering with. Thrift stores are especially famous for this. I love thrift stores, but in my experience, you'll find mostly romance novels and a bunch of cheesy 70's paperbacks. Having said that though, a friend of mine once found a load of great books in a thrift store down the street from him. The titles escape me at the moment except Saitre's Nausea was among them. Brian, my husband, has found some gems among the records as well, one example being a pristine copy of an Electric Prunes album. I've spent many hours in stinky, old book stores, run down thrift shops, and crouched over cardboard boxes at garage sales sifting through a mind boggling array of dated encyclopedia, someone's old college text books, the aforementioned romance novels, as well as enormous dictionaries so cumbersome no one in their right mind would want them and the owners are practically begging you to take them away! In short, all the books you yourself may be trying to rid YOURSELF of. Yes, it can be a heart breaking search, but when it pays off, it is so rewarding. Yard and garage sales have been probably my best source for truly remarkable finds that leave me ecstatic! Just as I once unearthed such great finds as original Charles Mingus and John Coltrane with Miles Davis LP's amid a box of polka and Christmas records, yesterday proved to be a good day for garage sale literary finds (strange as that may sound). There were two large boxes, haphazardly shoved under a long table, brimming with books near the entrance of the sale that would soon leave me happy, inspired to read and re-read some classics I haven't thought about in years, and in turn to write what you are now reading. I almost missed them, they were so obscured from plain sight, and when I found them, I almost passed them up. It was hot, really hot and the only books visible were of the large, cumbersome variety and the infamous dated textbooks. Now seriously, if you went to college in the eighties, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, no one needs or wants your old accounting textbooks. At least put out something interesting like psychology or philosophy texts if you're going to attempt this! I shoved a few of the bigger books out of the way and lo and behold, uncovered a Kurt Vonnegut paperback. One I had already read, I believe Slaughter House Five, but none the less I thought to myself,"This merits further investigation". My most recent experience with Vonnegut has been the audio book of Time Quake which proved to be a very entertaining way to begin my days, driving to work, laughing like a loon in my van by myself, probably to the disconcertion of other drivers around me. The underlying premise of Time Quake is somewhat confusing, but I found it very well summarized on a website dedicated to the work of Vonnegut titled Welcome To The Monkey House: The premise (of Time Quake) is that the universe stops in its post Big-Bang expansion. It suddenly leaps backward, eliminating ten years of expansion. But then it expands again, and the ten years are replayed. People go through those years on automatic pilot, repeating their past actions (and unable to change them in spite of the knowledge they now have - Kathy). Chaos ensues when the ten years are up and people must start thinking for themselves again. Besides that, it seems to me to be semi-autobiographical (as told by his alter-ego(?) Kilgore Trout) and a very funny, and sometimes frightening but dead on, look and commentary on humanity. The title of this opinion Men are jerks, women are psychotic, is Vonnegut's summary of people. You've got to admit, in a very broad sense, this is a pretty accurate statement and it had me doubled over in laughter at a stop light. Another one of my favorite bits of wisdom gleaned from Vonnegut is the tragically funny statement from his dying sister, "If there is a God, he sure must hate people". But I digress, I did not find the wonderful Time Quake, however I am now the proud owner of The Slaughter House Five and Cat's Cradle, which I've already read from the library but wouldn't mind re-reading, his well known novel Deadeye Dick, and ,Jailbird which I have not heard of. The books are older paperbacks, but they do not smell bad and they are not yellow or worn and dog-eared. I bought them for a quarter a piece. Everyone's heard of George Orwell, right? 1984, Big Brother...they even made a movie about it. Well, I got the spiffy paperbacks of both 1984 and Animal Farm, again for a quarter a piece. Notice a trend here? Alright, I paid a quarter for all of the books I mention in this opinion and they are all in good condition. Though I've read both works, it was as a teenager and I look forward to losing myself in them again now. A couple of months ago, there was a big write up on the J. D. Salinger book The Catcher In The Rye. It was the 50th anniversary of this controversial book that has found itself banned in schools on occasion. The paper interviewed teens on their thoughts on the book and I thought to myself, "What a horrible oversight on my part to have never read this book!" Well now I can because, yup, I got it for a quarter at my beloved yard sale. What really had me whooping for joy was the nice copy of Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems. Whether or not you're aware of it, you've heard the famous first line of Ginsberg's epic Howl for Carl Solomon: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked... Lisa Simpson even quotes it in and episode of The Simpsons. By far my favorite poem contained in this tome once on trial for obscenity is the wonderful America, with its prophetic words that would soon help fuel the counter-culture revolution of the 1960's. I am admittedly not a big fan of poetry. Reading Emily Dickinson and even Percy Shelley in school was pure torture to me, but I love the powerful and straight forward style of Ginsberg (and a hand full of others) and he quickly became one of my favorite figures from the Beat Generation. And while on the subject of the Beats, I also found the beautiful Jack Kerouac book The Subterraneans. I fell in love with Kerouac reading On The Road, the book that inspired many of the more adventurous souls of the time to travel and frequent coffeehouses, poetry readings, and jazz clubs. Even though I've never read any of his depressing books, when he was a down and out alcoholic like in Big Sur, I've since learned that Kerouac was not the gentle and deep soul I believed him to be. But there was a time, way back when I was reading The Subterraneans, when I believed Kerouac to be beautiful and pure and honest and, yes, maybe even the best American writer we have known. I look forward to reading this again, and being transported back to that time. As may be apparent, I already owned Howl and The Subterraneans, but for a quarter, I thought I would just buy them and give them to someone. The thought of them rotting in some old, dank basement is too much to bear. Some people rescue stray animals, I save neglected books - and, well, stray animals as my three cats will tell you. Well, I also got Joseph Heller's Catch 22 which our own epinions purports to be the number one action/thriller novel and two John Steinbeck books, The Grapes of Wrath, which honestly, I may never read although I'm sure it's good. I momentarily confused it with East of Eden, the film version of which I saw starring James Dean. Naturally, no Steinbeck collection would be complete without Of Mice and Men and I obtained a copy of it a well. Read this one in high school and will definitely read it again. For my two children, I found three Little House on the Prairie books, which I enjoyed as a child and look forward to sharing with them. I also bought two Beverly Cleary Ramona books. We read them all the year my daughter was in kindergarten, but my three year-old son has not heard them and I'm sure my daughter won't mind hearing them again. As a nine year-old about to enter fourth grade, she's getting "too big" for a lot of things but she still loves to be read to and, as a matter of fact, so do I.  |
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