mixed bag baby

There are a ton of books in my parents' house. On the third floor, where I sleep barring night duty, there are a bunch of books that I left here sometime during college. Those books make me laugh. There are also a bunch of Mad Magazine paperbacks that my brother collected when he was a kid. I don't look at those because I enjoy humor. There are a bunch of horror and sci fi collections that I read through when I can't sleep or when the books I've brought with me are not doing it. Those books are comforting.

Neither of my parents can read today because of various degenerations. But the books remain; something more for me to deal with later.

&&&

Here are two stories from awhile ago that I wanted to mention:
Going After Bobo by Susan Palwick
I loved this icy story of shitty brothers, cats and community. The world is well-developed by little details and that world is very frightening and very possible.

Rachel in Love by Pat Murphy
What people in chimp bodies do for love. Also, crazy parents and animal testing. A fantastic story that seems all too real.

&&&

Here is a nightmare: I am being gaslit by people at a job. It is destroying me. I run to a friend and he sets the office straight. This "friend" my brain supplied is a guy I follow on twitter but have never met: Saeed Jones.

He is such an amazing writer and truth teller that his power has obviously permeated my psyche! Here is a recent meditation on Maya Angelou.

Some things I want to happen in 2012

1) Maureen F. McHugh writes another book and it makes her a household name.
2) Everyone reads this essay by Roxane Gay and takes it to heart: "When you really think about it, though, the condescension and trivializing in the faux apology are kind of outrageous. In the time it took Grossman to point at his list and acknowledge the lack of diversity, he could have simply added two or three books to his list by women or writers of color that also interested him. Surely such titles exist." Everyone reads everything by Roxane Gay.
3) Vanessa Veselka writes a short story collection and it is illustrated.
4) I make some homemade shelves and paint them red.
5) Pitching essays and reviews out again becomes a thing I do.
6) Eleanor Davis makes comics again.
7) I start reviewing minis again in a safe n sane way.
8) Shelley Jackson makes a comic or writes a novel or both!
9) After getting Breathers published in a nice edition by an awesome small press with a big PR team, Justin Madson busts out another big, smart book.
10) My friends and I-wish-they-were-friends keep on making things, no one feels defeated and we all know each other.

(((())))

This is not an exhaustive list by any means. I forget names all the time. The best things become part of my brain and lose their identifiers, but even so they are there. I will keep you posted if I think of anything else.

What's on your list?

Here is something I did:

I decided that I actually wanted access to my minis and some reliable way to find them. Arranging them alphabetically by author seemed the way to go, and these corrugated cardboard boxes (acid content be damned)  were convenient receptacles for most sizes of minis. The tinies & humongoes are on the bookshelf above in no order,  but the bulk of my collection is now here. I was able to do a bunch of weeding as well. The compilations, like my beloved Papercutters, are on another shelf right now, but will end up in a box too when a suitable one arrives.

Now I have one big box of unread stuff to go through, and I am sure that I will need at least two more browsing boxes of this size when I am through. As I hinted at above, this is not a great longterm preservation solution, but it is cheap. Perhaps when I have a little more archive money (hire me!), I will splurge on some acid free boxes.

I also weeded my fiction collection and arranged that alphabetically by author as well. I tried to get rid of the Pynchon and other such things, but B wouldn't let me go all the way. As punishment, he must read Gravity's Rainbow in 2012.

All this talk of minis may have you wondering when I am going to start reviewing them again. I promise to have gained a new PO box by the end of January. See you in the mail.

The update I know that you have been dying for: All of the books contained in my four-tiered shelf have been added into LibraryThing. This does not include the stacks on top of it, the stacks around it and the piles scattered throughout the apartment.

This certainly has been a good way to figure out what I have and what I don't. Why I kept some things and got rid of others is a mystery likely born of moving around and stashing my books places that I am not. The bookswaps I've had since moving to NYC have also contributed to my strange collection.

So far less than half of my books have been cataloged (no comics either), but I plan on continuing and weeding as I go. I hope to sell/swap the stuff I don't want anymore and buy more small press books.

Perhaps I am not facile with the software yet, but I am finding it very difficult to get good suggestions from LT. So, any suggestions besides scanning the lists of books that my friends put on Goodreads?