Serendipity With a Battle of the Books Team

Serendipity

Lory fondly remembers the Serendipity book series by Stephen Cosgrove both from her childhood and also as a mother. 

Recently, we had a fun experience with a different sort of serendipity. We were at Exploration Commons, where we do a lot of our podcast work, building our audio editing skills – a work in progress. Lory found herself in an unexpected conversation with a woman wearing a sweatshirt from a local independent bookstore, Rudolph Girls. What started out as a conversation about the bookstore quickly turned into a conversation about the Battle of the Books. She and a handful of elementary school kids and a few parents were there for the first meeting of their Battle of the Books team. 

Two Sides followers might remember that Lory and I have significant Battle of the Books connections. Lory’s son competed on a battle team, I have emceed a Battle event for a number of years, and Lory and I were part of the winning team in the inaugural adult Battle of the Books After Hours last spring. 

As we talked with the coach of this team, we were invited into a meeting room to talk with the kids participating in the Battle. We hadn’t planned for it, but we found ourselves with a chance to touch on things that are important to us; promoting literacy, making reading fun, and supporting independent bookstores. And, all with a bunch of kids excited to read. Serendipity!

We had a fun conversation about our Battle experience, including sharing a picture of our Team Ted shirts. The kids didn’t seem to like the shirts as much as adults do. Go figure! We talked about how exciting it is to be in the competition. Their team’s event will be in the gym of a local high school and I told them how Battle competitions feel just like a big basketball game. Then we talked about preparing for the Battle including the very important work of picking a name and designing t-shirts.  

We ended our time with me and Lory taking a picture with the kids. We are such celebrities!

We’ll be seeing the kids again, because the Battle event I emcee is the same one they will be competing in. Serendipity. Good luck to this group and all the teams participating in the Battle!  Lory and I are both looking forward to seeing Team Grim Readers again and hoping we might get an opportunity to interview the winning team for the Two Sides to the Story podcast and website. 

Finding Treasure at Smith College

For a number of years, I went to the Smith College Book Sale at the National Guard Armory in Towson, Maryland. Back to my visits in a minute.

I don’t remember back then exploring Smith College or why they had a book sale. I did check it out as I started to write this. Smith College is a liberal arts college for women in Northampton, Massachusetts. I went to a wedding in Northampton once. I remember it as a nice town. I just missed an unexpected opportunity to see Bela Fleck in concert while I was there. Hold on – I hear Lory saying, “Ted, you are getting off track.” Okay, okay.

The book sale began in 1958 and supported Baltimore area women going to Smith College. Sometime after I stopped going,the sale moved from the Towson Armory to the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium. The sale ended in 2016. Sad that it came to an end.

I used to really look forward to the sale. I have no idea how many books I bought there, but it was a lot. I still run across books that I know I got there. I might get some of the details wrong, but I don’t think I’ll be too far off. The sale started on Friday afternoon, maybe evening. I don’t remember if it was all of Friday or just part of it, but if you wanted to get in when theyfirst opened you had to pay; $5 I think. Otherwise, I think it was free. It continued on Saturday and ended on Sunday.

I paid to get in. It was so much fun. Not to be trite, but ‘kid in a candy store’ feels right. So many books! “Where to start? What am I going to miss? What book that I want is someone else going to buy first?” The variety was incredible; best-sellers, classics, fiction, nonfiction, new books, old books, and books you don’t run across a lot. The prices were low. You could afford to take chances. I remember getting Boccaccio’s Decameron. I still haven’t read it, but it could still happen. I remember getting books on Latin and Middle-English. I wish I had made lists back then of what I bought. It would be interesting now to revisit my choices and to speculate on why I bought some of the books.

I think my favorite purchase was a fifteen-volume set of the writing of Washington Irving. I liked the look of the set; kind of a faded green with gold letters. I’m not sure if I ever read any of it, but it looked good on the shelf. I wouldn’t have spent a lot, so I’m guessing I paid between five and ten dollars.

On Sunday, you could buy a traditional paper grocery store bag for $5 and fill it with books. I’m past buying like that now, but such fun back then.

The Armory wasn’t just filled with books; it was filled with kindred spirits. Fond memories.

Lory and I want to use this podcast, in part, to promote literacy, especially early readers. In my online poking around, I ran across a nonprofit organization called Velocity of Books whose mission is donating books. I want to look into them more. Maybe we will be talking about them sometime.

Do you have memories of the Smith College Book Sale? Let us know at twosides2thestory@yahoo.com

The Warmth of a Small Library

“Nineteen years before she decided to die, Nora Seed sat in the warmth of the small library at Hazeldene School in the town of Bedford.”

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Lory and I are both reading a book that a friend mentioned, The Midnight Library. I’m less than halfway through, but I liked the first line so much I didn’t want to wait to share it. 

“Nineteen years before she decided to die…” Before she decided to die? Why did she decide to die and why are we nineteen years from the decision?

Sitting in the warmth of a small library feels at odds with her coming decision to die. Does the library have something to do with it?

I’m enjoying the book and looking forward to the rest of it.

I’m not familiar with Haig, but he has written a good number of books. I’ll probably be checking him out. Any Haig fans out there? Let us know at twosides2thestory@yahoo.com

Beating Dragons

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

I am a big fan of Gaiman and am inclined to like a lot of things he says. I’m also a big fan of fairy tales and fairy tale retellings, but focusing on this quote is about more than my likes; this quote hits on a core idea for me. 

Sometimes fiction lets you explore ideas, behaviors, and life more clearly than nonfiction. 

Lory and I have had many conversations about fiction versus nonfiction, what should you read in order to learn, and reading for purpose versus reading for pleasure. I’m not going to try to get into all of that now, it is a post of its own, probably an episode of its own. I expect that we will tackle some of these ideas more than once.

For now, I’ll say that I deeply believe that fiction gives us paths to examining life and ourselves that are sometimes more useful than nonfiction. 

Fairy tales, and fantasy, open that door even wider. Fantasy allows us to see ourselves and others in roles that we might not accept in ‘real’ life. 

For my Masters of Liberal Arts, I wrote “Making Their Own Choices: Strong Female Characters in Fantasy Literature – One Hundred Books for Late Elementary to High School Readers.” A big idea for me was that because it was fantasy, boys and girls could accept girls in roles that they might not have otherwise. Fantasy gives us room to think differently. Fiction gives us room to think differently.

Back to Gaiman’s quote – What I like about this is that he is saying it isn’t about the dragons; it is about how we deal with the dragons. In a larger way, fantasy and fiction aren’t so much about the things that aren’t ‘real’ as they are about how we deal with life.

More on this another time.

What do you think about fiction versus nonfiction? Let us know at twosides2thestory@yahoo.com

Road Trip Reading with Hugo Cabret

Those of you with children in your life, probably know how challenging the road trip part of a vacation can be. Most kids are not content being stuck in the car for too long, so we adults often come up with creative ways to entertain youngsters during these adventures. As a mom, I tried many things over the years. Everything from the license plate game, waving at cars that drove by, the I spy game, and would you rather (also known as this or that). I even packed a bag full of small surprise items that were distributed every 45 minutes and were guaranteed to provide approximately 4 minutes of distraction for my kiddos. Yes, you read that last part correctly.

One of my more successful ideas was reading a book aloud to my son while we were on the drive to and from our family vacation. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, is the book I read on that trip. I have fond memories of that journey and can happily say this book is a wonderful choice for road trip reading. Selznick is the author and illustrator of this lovely book. His artistry is impressive. I wish I could bring the pages of a book to life the way he does, through words and drawings. Absolutely beautiful, and a fantastic way to pass hours in the car with children.

Reading aloud, reading children's books in adulthood, and beautifully illustrated books are all topics we hope to explore in future episodes and blog articles. We would love to hear from you about these topics and your adventures in road trip reading at twosides2thestory@yahoo.com

Hilary Mantel

A sad part of reading is that the writers we read age and eventually die. We, or at least I, feel the pain when we lose our favorites. Even though we don’t know each other, there is still a relationship of sorts when you read and enjoy an author’s writing. I’ve had writers whose books I always read. I waited for each new one to come out, and knowing that there will never be another hurts. I’m not saying it is the same as the loss of a family member or a friend, but maybe it isn’t all that much different.

I’ve lost a lot of favorites, but that is a story for another time. 

Today, I want to talk about a lost writer that I never read.

I read of the death of Hilary Mantel, best known for her novels about Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror & the Light. These three books have been on my mind, but I haven’t gotten to them. I will, I think, but somehow now I’m wishing that I had gotten to them while she was still with us. I can’t really say what difference it makes, but it feels like it matters to me. 

I knew of the Cromwell books, but learned things about Mantel that I didn’t know. I learned how highly regarded she was by other writers. Historian Simon Schama (I have read him), said of her “one of the very greatest of our writers; poetic and profound prose with an incomparable feel for the texture of history.” Keep in mind that this is a historian talking about a writer of historical fiction. 

I learned of other books that I was unaware of.

I learned of her graciousness and the role she played in the lives of other writers. 

Hilary, if I can be so bold, sorry I didn’t read you while you were still with us.

Share your favorite Hilary Mantel novel with us at twosides2thestory@yahoo.com

Live Unusually

On this rainy day in early October, I am drawn to an interesting looking old building in historic downtown Ellicott City, Maryland. Outside of the store on the sidewalk is a small tent sign offering simple but solid advice…live unusually.

I wander inside this specialty shop to find an eclectic mix of merchandise and a beautiful second floor loft housing a well thought out collection of interesting books and magazines. The appropriately named, Unusual Company, offers a unique shopping environment that is bound to inspire a sense of whimsy in it’s customers.

Several items caught my eye during my short visit, so I snapped a few photos and a quick video to give you a small taste of the shops offerings…which includes gelato. Yes, that’s right. Gelato. And books. If this concept of living unusually sounds appealing, you may want to plan a visit to this unique place to discover your next book to read.

A Writer is Only Half of His Book

A writer is, after all, only half of his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.

~ P.L. Travers, author of the Mary Poppins books

Yes! We agree. Lory and I have talked more than once about this idea. It is a wonderful thing to write a book, but what does it mean to write a book that doesn’t get read? What is a writer without readers?

This feels a little like ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’, or ‘If a tree falls in the forest with no one to hear does it make a sound?’ We could have an interesting philosophical discussion about writers without readers, but for our purposes here I’m more interested in the practical idea that the writer and reader are two sides of something; it takes both to bring meaning to a book. 

Some writers say that they write for themselves, not for a reader. Some writers know their audience and are consciously writing for them. In between, are books where the writer had something to say and the reader heard what they thought the author had to say; often not the same thing.

Readers find things that writers never thought about. So is it there or isn’t it? Yes. No. Maybe.

I was interviewing Laura Lippman on her book, Living Doll. I asked her a question about the connection between how the main character’s mother had dealt with his childhood health problems and how he dealt with his adult relationships with women. From her reaction, it was clear that she had not written with that idea in mind, and she was intrigued by the idea. Did I find something that wasn’t there or did I find something that was there, but she didn’t realize it. Who knows?

My thinking is that it doesn’t matter. Writers write what they write. Readers read what they read. How fun is it thinking about the intersection?

On Mary Poppins – I looked it up and found out that there are eight Mary Poppins Books. I don’t think I’ve read any of them. I remember reading the Wizard of Oz and how different the book Dorothy was from the movie Dorothy. Now, I’m wondering about Mary Poppins.

On the relationship between writers and readers – What do you think? Let us know at twosides2thestory@yahoo.com