dinosaur skin

classes resume on wednesday, january 4th.

until then, i am on vacation, left to my own devices.

happy holidays, by the way.

i stayed up til 3am finishing The Westing Game lastnight. it was written like the traditional mystery, modeled by the likes of Agatha Christie. it begins with a group of seemingly unrelated strangers who are forced to live together and finishes with all of them being related to the murdered character who has been leading them by the nose throughout the entire thing. i managed to stay one step ahead of the characters in the book but i lost my grip on the clues at the very end when turtle wexler began her trial. a satisfying ending, although i'll never understand why sam westing would want to...but i won't ruin the end for those of you who haven't read it yet. suffice it to say that it is a good read.

before that i read A Mango-Shaped Space about a thirteen-year-old girl with synesthesia. the concept and story was interesting but the way its was actually presented was rather mediocre. i liked the beginning, but by the end, the story had lost the elusiveness and intrigue it had started with and it became your average story about a person's misguided dreams of fitting in. some parts were cute, but what kept me reading was the descriptions of the condition itself: the effects of acupuncture on synesthetes, the way a color can be linked to a certain taste. it boggled my mind. i actually became dizzy when reading the descriptions of the main character's visions after having acupuncture. she was seeing pheromones and this grabbed my attention too. i learned that all animals secrete these invisible chemicals called pheromones that are meant to attract another of the same species--or something like that. peoples' pheromones mix when they are relating to one another through friendship, business, and even attraction. but all of this is done unconciously. we don't know that we're releasing pheromones or that they are wrapping themselves around the person whom we like the most. if we think hard enough we can't stop the pheromones from coming out of us. and if the descriptions in the book are anything to go by, pheromones have a mind of their own once they have been released from the body. but i should warn you, synesthesia is not a disease. it is believed that everyone is born with it, but that as our brains develop our senses diverge from one another and we loose the ability to relate numbers with colors or tastes with sounds. it is very possible that a lot of people still do have remnants of synesthesia. Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo" might be related. its a concept that has opened many doors--which just means i now have more things to wonder about.

lately at the bookstore, we've been trying to sell the more obscure books. it all began when i looked at the new book table and decided to clean it up. it was a hodgepodge of books so i went about taking out all the books that weren't selling and put them on the shelf. i kept the newer books and the books we had a lot of on the round. when alex saw that the table was now nice and orderly with more room to spare, she began putting more books on there! some of them were books i had just taken off! but since she's done that, we've been selling--or rather getting rid of--the older books which aren't very popular. i tried to sell Tears of the Salamander with no luck but had a hit with From Charlie's Point of View. i've found that you can sell a book you've heard nothing about as long as you read the little synopsis. i don't do this often because i don't want customers coming back sueing us for recommending books with inappropriate content. but, ironically, even books i have read can still cause me some uneasiness if i feel i haven't recommended it to the right person with the right age. some people come in looking for books for girls and boys whose parents are wholly against magic and harry potter. its a tough call when you recommend something like Chasing Vermeer. its an excellent book and another mystery, but it mentions Charles Fort and has a teeny bit of mysticism or otherworldliness in it. another tough call is I, Coriander which has a great deal of magic and even goes into a slight criticque of religion, religious fanatics, and the hypocrisy of government advocators of religion. most people don't think these kinds of issues are in children's literature, but you would be surprised. Nancy Farmer's books are challenging as well as Phillip Pullman's His Dark Material's Trilogy. many people don't realize that the Chronicles of Narnia are extremely religious, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe being a Christian allegory. Prince Caspian even goes into conspiracy when Glozelle and Sopespian manipulate Miraz into fighting in the tournament. of course, when you read these things as a child, they don't mean anything. but when you go back and read these same stories, you understand what you missed in the past and you wonder if reading about such things as a child affected you unconciously. would you be who you are now if you didn't read about Aslan taking a swipe at Aravis' back with his claws? would you be who you are now if you didn't read about the end of Narnia in The Last Battle with Lewis' startling description of layered worlds in the last chapter? and how the good Calormen who worshipped Tash was called a follower of Aslan. and the dark island where Rhoop was found driven mad by his dreams. not daydreams, dreams.