Top Ten Tuesday- The Memories

Believe it or not, I'm a pretty nostalgic girl. I have photo albums stuffed full of pictures of family and friends starting from around age fifteen. I get a little teary when I think about a group of seniors who are abandoning me this year. I like to reminisce about our first year of dating with my husband. And as far as the bad memories go, I shut those out like anyone else whose mastered the art of denial. This week the Broke and the Bookish ask us to take a walk down memory lane, listing our top ten bookish memories.

1. Getting frosting on the jacket of my brand-new copy of Charlotte's Web when I was five. I got the book for Christmas and then took it to whatever gathering we were at and I got bright blue smudge on the front. I was so pissed.

2. Chomsky, my chocolate lab, tearing the crap out of my The Marriage Plot book. He had never really destroyed something of actual value and I have never physically felt my blood pressure increase so rapidly before. I was so pissed. Again.

[Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta]

3. Starting this blog. I had had a bad attitude about the blog world before this; there are a lot of boring, poorly written, annoying blogs out there! And then I got laid off and became really, really scared about what I would do all summer with the big grey cloud of unemployment hanging over me- I needed a project. Luckily, I was hired back a few months later, but the blog idea stuck. 

4. My husband and I met in a Detective Fiction class at UCLA. We were studying for the final and he was trying to cram as much information into my head as possible about Alaine Robbet-Grillet's The Erasers, since I hadn't read it. All I remember is that he kept telling me not to forget something that was sure to be a question, and, sure enough I did. And yes, I do intend one day to go back and read it. Maybe. I think I got a B in the class, but I managed to get a boyfriend, so that was cool.

5. The first reading I ever went to was Chuck Palahniuk, back when he was still relatively decent. It was at the Borders (aw, do you remember Borders?) on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica and you had to get tickets earlier in the day. After we went back later that evening we were packed in upstairs and given meat air freshners- and then had to wait another hour for him to come out. It was a really cooky event, but I remember loving it- these people really loved books and were willing to give up an evening to see him. Honestly, I wasn't even sure if I realized readings existed before this (I was nineteen or twenty, in my defnese). 

6. Reading Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle is one of my most vivid reading experiences ever. For those that are not familiar with the story, it deals with the issue of illegal immigration in Southern California. I finished the book and wanted to buy copies for every conservative I knew. I felt for the characters in ways I had never had before. Working with the population I work with the cause was especially near and dear to my heart.

7. The only time I've ever come close to crying in front of my students was when I read them the student version of Marley and Me. It was horrible- I was drinking water, coughing, and yelling at kids to pay attention that really were, just so I wouldn't start bawling over that poor dead dog. In retrospect it probably would have been fine for them to see me upset; kids need to know that emotions are normal and that teachers are human. 

 

8. Packing up all my books and moving to our house, where I then got to set them up in our great room was such a laborious, fun experience. I remember feeling a little sad as I packed them up, but also enjoyed looking at ones I had forgotten about. And then I got to reorganize everything it the new house into four bookshelves instead of three. You have no idea how much joy this brought me- my babies had room to breathe.

9. Finishing Underworld was such an anti-climatic, yet satisfying event last summer. I guess I thought there would be maybe, like, a fireworks show in my honor when I finished it, but alas, nothing. On the other hand, that bitch is done. 

10. NaNoWriMo last November was absolutely insane, and is something I will remember forever. I didn't do the best job pacing myself and really felt it at the end. I actually pulled out what I have so far the other day and added six or seven hundred words. Something I definitely need to put more effort into.