By the Cover


I read a lot of junk. Not Junque even. Pure unadulterated junk. I used to love true crime novels until a true crime happened to one of my professors and I lost my taste for them. I think I liked them because I always knew what the outcome was ahead of time. Whatever trauma had happened had all ready happened and in most cases, the trauma causer was caught was punished.

I liked that. I wasn't looking for a "Who Done It", I was happy with the "He Done it and He Done Gone To Jail". My college library had a limited amount of leisure reading material available and for whatever reason they were crime novels.

There was also a fascinating (to me) book by a coroner detailing autopsies he had performed and interesting (to me) cause of death. I'm a little morbid (a lot).

What I hate about reading junk is the guilt. I don't want to be seen reading junk. I feel that if I am reading in public I should read something Good. But I read a lot of Good books and there aren't fun books (to me). Classic literature is all smart causing and character building and looks good on the book shelf after, but they take too long and make me think too much. They are the Nice Books, the "Let me introduce you to my Mother Books.

I like the one night stand books. The trashy, tarty, leather jacket wearing books. The books you would never admit to reading after Labor Day. After which you are supposed to retire that trash and pick up your anointed Charles Dickens and plunge back into what Goth horror you stopped reading once it got warm outside.

You can't properly read the classics if you are also swatting mosquitoes. Takes the Pomp right out of that book of Victorian Poetry you are pretending to read. Put that down and pick up a Detective Novel, preferably one from a series. They take 10 minutes to read and by the end of vacation you can truthfully say you read 8 novels.

Try a horror novel. It stays light until late, the boogieman has fled for darker climbs.

Cheap novels also take the abuse. Spill something on it? Not a problem, fold over the page? Not an issue, break the spine? No worries. Cheap paperbacks love getting beaten up, it makes them look tough. That prissy reprint of some pretentious British fop with mother issues can't hold a candle to a properly dog-eared paperback.

That paperback novel has been places, it got left in that sudden deluge last week, and it got left in your front seat for three months and got bleached by the sun. It has been stuffed into backpacks and carry ones. Tattooed by that phone number that you can't remember who it belongs to, but it looks over seas, it's scarred up from that incident with the car door, and has crayon over the fly leaf from that friends' two year old you ran into at the laundry mat that time.

The Hard Cover makes you look smart. People won't bother you when they see you immersed in some treatise. Paper back invites interruption. Hard backs build their own protective wall against incoming communication.

If it's a Hard Cover it is a new release. A New Book. The best thing ever. Better even then New Car, because New Book Smell is just for you. You can not share New Book Smell. It only lasts a minute. It 's the smell of a bookstore. Book binding, ink, new paper. The smell of a Book Store.

You can not get Book Store on line. Even New Books don't smell the right way when they arrive in the mail. Part of the excitement of going to look at books is the thrill of finding the book. Up and down isles, different sections and topics.

Even if you are on a Mission you are going to walk past the Buddest Self Help for The recently Transgendered isle or you will find that Big Book of Yard Tips you didn't know you had been looking for. Isle after Isle of things you didn't know you wanted to know about! What Opportunity!

Online reduces the chances of running across that Big Book of Yard Tips book because you were in the Mysteries section and you can't just amble over to Gardening. You can't skim the front page to see if this is what you really want or cheat and read the last page to see what happens. There is no sitting on the floor online.



Books are better the Videos

An old movie, even a good old movie looks dated. The clothes are look like something you grandma wore and the hairstyles are laughable. It can be so distraction that it takes you out of the story entirely. In a book, no matter when it was written or how detailed the explanation of their clothing and hair; you the reader can make then look like what ever you want them too. If you just know she would be all about the hip huggers and baby tee, hey, thy will be done! Victorian School Girl no more. You can't get into how they lived with out electricity? give them power! just because they lived before automobiles, pretend they just don't talk about them. You don't talk about your car in idle conversation about the garden, why should they.

I can't rewatch The Breakfast Club and be 16 again, but I can read The Outsiders and be in eighth grade again listening to the rest of the class get to where the building burns and one of the guys dies and start crying. Everytime. I can read I, Trissy again and feel the empowerment I felt when I read it as a child.

I have been all over New Mexico thanks to Tony Hillerman books. The movies made from those books don't give me the same sense of place that books do. I feel like I've been to Tuba City. I know who lives there and how they live. The movies didn't do that for me.

Nevada Barr has taken me on tours of National Parks that I didn't know were there. But I've been to them now.

My favorite books aren't classics, but they will be. Classic Junque Paper Back Novels .