TwentySevenLetters / B

Just ‘fess up

Public Service Announcement: if you borrow a library book and somehow damage it, please—for the love of god PLEASE—don’t try to repair it yourself. Unless you are particularly skilled in book repair (as in, do it professionally), and even then, I’d prefer it if you didn’t just do it yourself.

We’re not going to bite. Really. We’re not going to jump up and down and be furious. If the book is damaged beyond repair and you say nothing, we’re going to trace it back to you and leave a charge on your account for the replacement. If you tell us, we’re more likely to try to work something out—a partial payment, you provide a replacement, something.

Most damages to books are perfectly fixable. Torn pages, torn jackets, even pages pulled out completely—just hang on to the pieces, return it all together, and say you’re sorry. Blame it on the kid, the dog, space aliens—we don’t care. We can fix it. But people! Don’t repair it yourself. Too often we get books back that have been scotch-taped together poorly, and one section of the page is a good quarter-inch off from the rest of the page. It looks bad and it’s more likely to tear again when it catches on things.

Blame it on space aliens, apologize, and hand over the pieces. That way, we can repair it the way we want, or replace it if need be. (Sometimes we can even tell when it’s not your fault at all—if a chunk of pages has fallen out of a book, it’s usually either a bad binding or just an old book with a lot of circulations, and it just wears out. And we’d never charge someone for that.)

Policies may vary at your own library, so you might want to check on that, but really: we’re nice people. We expect you’ll treat the books well, but we understand that accidents happen. Just… please don’t try to fix it yourself.

Booktalks I never would have thought of

One nine-year-old girl to another, very excitedly:

"Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing. This is the best book ever. A kid eats a turtle!"

Support the USPS

The price of a postage stamp recently increased from 37¢ to 39¢. This has inspired much grumbling, and frankly, I don’t really understand why. We can mail a letter—up to an ounce, actually—across the entire country for less than half the cost of a cup of coffee. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me, especially looking at historical context.

According to The World of Little House (by Carolyn Strom Collins and Christina Wyss Eriksson), Pony Express started carrying mail from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California in 1860. It took about 10 days to cover the 2,000 miles, and cost $5 to send a half-ounce letter. Five dollars in 1860 is the same as $161.62 in today’s funds. It cost $161 to send half as much as we can for a measly 39¢. (As the service caught on, the price for Pony Express dropped, down to a dollar after a couple of months, which in today’s dollars is a much more reasonable $23.32.)

By 1863, there was an actual post office near where the Ingalls family lived, and they were able to send that same half-ounce letter for just three cents. A bargain! Of course, the three cents in 1863 translates to 47¢ currently, so I still think 39¢ is a pretty good deal.

(Historical currency conversions are courtesy of this site.)

Also, another reason to support your local post office: Picture-book animal stamps. Wilbur! Maisy! Frederick! Wild Thing! I really wish we didn’t have so many stamps on hand, because I just can’t justify buying more when I still have another two and a half books on the fridge.

They're not ALL raised by wolves!

It’s no secret that I really hate working Saturdays. They’re crazy-busy, with a big crowd of kids here for Chess Club (22 today) and another big crowd at the computers (currently there are 15 kids gathered around the 5 computers; I should yell at them to disperse, but they’re the quietest they’ve been all day, so…)

The chess club here is run by two boys from the high school chess team. They’re either juniors or seniors, but they are at least 16 years old. One of them wasn’t here today (these two are far less reliable than the two boys who did this last year, but then they both decided to go to college—the nerve!), leaving the other one to handle the 22 kids.

Unfortunately, the one who was here is the less mature one, the one with far less control over the kids—and himself. The chess club was winding down and they were starting to clean up, when two of the players (boys who are normally very well behaved) took two boards and made off with them. They didn’t go far—behind a bookcase—and it was obviously meant as a quick prank. But the high school guy—AKA, Guy In Charge!—took off after them, and started chasing them around the library. Running, yelling some kind of, I dunno, war cry, tossing books over the bookcases so they’d fall on the kids on the other side.

I had to abandon the reference question I was working on to go tell a 16-year-old to behave in public and not act like an 11-year-old. While I was at it, I told the 11-year-olds to knock it off, too. The younger boys looked appropriately contrite, but the Guy In Charge… eh, who knows what we’ll see next week.

But here’s the nice part: an hour or so later, the two younger boys came back in. They approached the desk slowly. The glanced at each other, and then one said, “Um… about earlier… we’re sorry. I guess we forgot the rules, but we were bad and wrong, and it was probably dangerous, too, and… we’re really sorry. We won’t do it again.”

Now, what’s worth noting here is that these boys weren’t here with their parents. When they came back, they still weren’t with their parents. In other words, there was no authority figure to march them back here to apologize for their misbehavior. They decided on their own that they were wrong and sorry, and that they should tell me. And this wins them all kinds of points, in my book.

I told them that I really appreciated their coming back and apologizing; it was very good of them to think to do that. I also stressed that I wasn’t mad at them, and I was more concerned that, with all the people in the room, someone could get hurt if people are running around and/or throwing things. And that, while they, too, were wrong, Guy In Charge really ought to have known better than to run around, and he ought to apologize as well.

Then I let them have an extra turn on the computers. Because I’m a sucker that way.

I lack "The Ugly"

More reviews!

The Good: MT Anderson, Feed. I read this one on a friend’s recommendation, and I’m glad I did. The basic premise is that we’re in a futuristic society, where it’s perfectly normal to have a computer chip implanted in your head, providing the “feed”—essentially, the Internet, only more. It tracks your shopping habits and recommends similar products, it advertises things you’re walking past, it’s television shows and news and email and maps, and it’s all right there in your head. But what happens when your feed gets hacked? A malfunctioning feed is one thing, but a malfunctioning feed that was installed atypically besides is a much bigger problem. The book was really good, well-written and absorbing, but I think I need to re-read the ending. Either I missed something (a good possibility; I was reading at work and kept getting interrupted), or there were some questions that never get answered. (I’m specifically thinking of the lesions. Anyone want to help me out? Was that actually addressed at the end of the book, or just left as a “hey, that’s weird!” thing?)

The Bad: Michael Lawrence, Small Eternities. This is the sequel to A Crack in the Line, which is a mediocre story following a cliché idea and writing it kind of badly. The basic premise is one of divergent histories, where each deviation creates a new reality to support the choice. Except that it’s not entirely about choice; it seems to be just circumstance that creates these extra worlds. In one world, it’s a boy (named Alaric); in another, it’s a girl (named Naia). One day they fall into each other’s worlds and have to confront their alternate selves, and figure out why they’re able to shift between worlds. And who is that weird old man who seems to follow them around? The first book ends on something of a cliffhanger, which I really think ought to have been moved up several hundred pages, just to give the plot a little… oh, anything.

At this point, it’s fair to disclose that I have a freakishly high tolerance for bad writing. Bad syntax, clichés, inconsistent dialogue (or dialect!), I’ll take it and read it anyway. It’s very rare for me to put down a book just because the writing is awful. This is the advantage of being a pretty quick reader: you’re not wasting a lot of time, even on the bad stuff.

Anyway, Small Eternities. It was every bit as mediocre as its predecessor. This time, though, the premise was already established. There’s a lot of back-and-forth blame and angst between the two teenagers. It also covers the backstory of the weird old man and how he wanders in and out of realities (except that it doesn’t really explain that part). This book ends not on a cliffhanger so much as just the opposite: it’s pretty much over. The series has stopped. There’s nothing more to it. But there’s one more book, due out later this year. And because I just can’t help myself, I’m sure I’ll read it, hate it, and rant about it here.

Incidentally, the author’s website is at www.wordybug.com. Excerpts from the first two books (sometimes called the Withern Rise trilogy; sometimes called the Aldous Lexicon—and it doesn’t seem to be a US/UK difference; the author just seems inconsistent) are available. And frankly, the most interesting thing on the site is the front-page author photo, where he has a bunch of bananas on his shoulder.