Covering a Classic

Hi people! I know, it's been too long, I suck at blogging on a regular basis, etc. etc. While we were apart, here's what happened to me. I got a part time job at my local Borders here in Brentwood. I will be the Children's Book Specialist, which is basically the job title I would have made up for myself in a fantasy world, so how fortuitous that it turned out to be real!

For these first few days I've just been learning the basics. Days one through three, I spent almost all my time at the register. Having never worked retail before, it was a whole new world for me! A little nerve wracking when something out of the ordinary comes up, but I'm getting the hang of it. The past two days I've spent shelving (or as I apparently pronounce it, "shelfing"), which means taking all the new books that come in and putting them in order where they belong on the shelves. It's a bit of a puzzle, as each shelf has to be full, but books with several copies have to be facing out, and all the books have to stay in order, but also make room for all the new product. So there is lots of scooting stuff around and squeezing things to fit.

The primary function of this task is apparently to taunt me with book after book that I am inspired to add to my must-read list. I was having a hard enough time keeping up with the books I knew about; now I discover there is a whole world of books I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW EXISTED that I also want to read!

One other thing I've come to realize is that the phrase "don't judge a book by its cover" is kind of ridiculous when actually referring to books. Probably half the books I come across that I pick up suck me in first by having an awesome or interesting cover. Ah, you got me again, marketing! (Shakes fist.)

For example, today I shelved these really gorgeous new editions of three classics. Penguin commissioned artist Ruben Toledo to illustrate these covers, and I wanted to buy them just for prettiness sake. Take a look:




I love the Wuthering Heights one especially, with the caricatures of haughty Heathcliff and crazy Cathy, and the fabulous way the really intricate branches are drawn into the defined shapes of the trees. What a great way to hook readers into picking up these classics.

What's a book cover you are especially crazy about or have a vivid memory of? Share in the comments!

Yadi Love

Seems ESPN finally realized what Cardinals fans have known for a few years now... that Yadier Molina is delightful and so much fun to watch and his adorable mug will sell this magazine to women!


And, also, in a related story, he is THE best catcher in baseball.

Unexpected

I recently checked out Salinger's Franny & Zooey from the library. I always loved The Catcher in the Rye, and its protagonist Holden is one of my favorite characters in literature. Since Salinger only published a handful of works before withdrawing into his famously reclusive life, I figured I should give one of his other books a try.

It was a quick little read, and is technically composed of two novellas which were initially published separately, nearly two years apart, in The New Yorker. The stories concern a couple particular members of the Glass family, in this case Franny, the youngest, and Zooey, her older brother and the youngest son.

I expected and found rambling characters like Holden, struggling with becoming adults, struggling with making sense of life and more immediately, their own thoughts and actions, all described in the frank and coarse language that put The Cather in the Rye on banned book lists.

What I didn't expect was one character's sudden but impassioned discourse on the person of Jesus Christ, and what it means to pray to and follow Him.

This is but one example of why I truly believe that God's power to reveal Himself is not limited only to the work of those who intend to do so. Salinger is not, at least by all accounts at the time he was being published, a Christian. But something of the truth of God was in these pages as I read them, as Zooey struggled to explain to his sister why she ought to think carefully about who she was praying to and how. Here are a few of the quotes that leveled me.

If you're going to say the Jesus Prayer, at least say it to Jesus, and not to St. Francis and Seymour and Heidi's grandfather all wrapped up in one. Keep him in mind if you say it, and him only, and him as he was and not as you'd like him to have been... The part that stumps me, really stumps me, is that I can't see why anybody... would even want to say the prayer to a Jesus who was the least bit different from the way he looks and sounds in the New Testament... Who in the Bible besides Jesus knew - knew - that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too ****** stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look?

To try and understand the whole person of Christ, as he was, not to cringe away from or try and ignore the difficult parts about who he was and what he taught... what a sobering, convicting challenge. The Jesus who sacrificed himself and loved and healed was also the Jesus who threw tables in the temple, who told me to take up my own cross if I want to follow him, who taught things that are radical and absolute, things utterly at odds with the easy life offered by this world. I have to follow, to love, to obey the whole Jesus. Though more difficult to understand, he's infinitely better and more worthy than any other version I might construct.