Part of getting old is realizing that used bookstores, while very cool, are not quite as cool as you think they are when you first start browsing them in college. The realization comes gradually as you start to see many of the same books in diverse stores. Those certain titles that were wildly overprinted five and ten and twenty years ago find themselves clogging musty shelves across the country—and they’re probably not the titles you’re looking for. It’d be fun to compile a list of such books. Here’s a start: have you ever seen a fantasy/sci-fi section without at least one big blue copy of The One Tree by Stephen Donaldson?

The lustre of browsing used bookstores is also tarnished somewhat when you already know of more books that you’d like to read than you’ll have time for in the rest of your days. That’s not to say that I’m not always open to new authors, only that the threshold required to pique my interest is a little higher than “seems interesting there on the shelf.”

These days, when confronting a used bookstore, I don’t so much aimlessly browse as spot-check for the things I want to add to my collection: hardcover editions of Blood Meridian and Suttree, anything I don’t already have by W.H. Auden or Wallace Stevens, wacky editions of 1001 Nights or Alice in Wonderland. The list is longer than that, but not so long that most used bookstores fail to have that special something that I want that I don’t already have. When I moved to Arlington from Maryland a few years ago I did an exhaustive sweep of all the used bookstores in the area, and came away bitterly disappointed.

By these standards, Baldwin’s Book Barn in West Chester, PA is an exemplary place. It’s a four-storey barn full of books, emphasizing local history but with a good mix of everything else, including a surprisingly big children’s section. The best part is that they manage to fill the four stories without resorting to the sea of mass-market paperbacks that form the bulk of so many used bookstores’ stock. Almost everything there is actually shelfworthy¹.

My haul there consisted mainly of things for Ella down the road: Andrew Lang’s The Green Fairy Book and The Red Fairy Book, along with a Tales from the Arabian Nights edition by him full of educational (and often wildly politically incorrect) sidenotes. Suanna also found a couple children’s books for Ella, too. The big ka-ching, though, was the four-volume first American edition of the Mardus & Mathers translation of A Thousand Nights and a Night. A find like that is enough to make you start aimlessly browsing used bookstores again.

¹ shelfworthy: Visually pleasing on the shelf, based on shape, texture, and spine. Mass markets are almost never shelfworthy, and clothbound editions (especially with the dust jacket off) almost always are. Unless I’m picking up something to read on the airplane, I only buy shelfworthy books anymore.

UPDATE: More on shelfworthiness in this post.

The schtick is “here”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000389.html. “Glen”:http://www.engel-cox.org/ obligingly asked me three questions, answered below.

_What is your goal as a role-player? That is, why do you play RPGs and what do you get out of playing them?_

I love make-believe and always have. Every once in a while you come across someone who thinks that it’s appropriate to stop such activity at a certain age, which is nonsense. RPGs are a sort of structured collective storytelling, and thus combine three of my favorite activities in the whole world: telling stories, playing games, and hanging out with friends. It doesn’t even seem fair that it’s possible to do those three things all at once, but hey, sometimes the world is a wonderful place.

_You just won VH1’s contest for the ultimate concert. Name three currently active musical acts that you would put together for a private concert at a local venue for you and 50 of your close personal friends._

At first I tried to come up with list of three acts that would all set a similar tone for the evening. But this is going to be a very long concert, so some variety is OK and even desirable. Had I chosen three singer-songwriter-y types, the upstairs at Common Grounds would be the right venue, but as it is we’ll need a decent sound system, so it’ll have to be The Black Cat.

First set: They Might Be Giants. Among the 50 people I’d pick, at least a third of them would have a strong opinion as to what they’d like to hear the Johns play. This’d be an all-request set, with the Band of Dans there too. I’ll be fine as long as they end with “She’s an Angel.”

Second set: Radiohead. But first both bands would be up there, playing “Cyclops Rock” followed by “Killer Cars.” A year ago I might have insisted that they stick to their Bends/OK Computer material, but “having seen them live”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000050.html, they can play whatever the heck they want.

Third set: Tom Waits. But first Radiohead will stay on the stage and they’ll play together: “A Wolf at the Door” (Waits on vocals) and “Filipino Box Spring Hog” (with the band totally rocking out). I can imagine TMBG and Radiohead playing together, and Radiohead and Waits, but not TMBG and Waits, hence the order. By this time it’ll be late, so it’s OK if everybody just collapses to the floor and Tom’s up there with just his piano while we stare at the ceiling. He can play whatever he wants as long as he ends with “Anywhere I Lay My Head.”

_With the new popularity of the long form video for adapting classic books (i.e., Lord of the Rings), what book(s) would you like to see adapted next as a movie series with the same loving attention to detail?_

So . . . many . . . choices . . . I’ll just write about the first two things that came to mind as options.

_The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever_, by Stephen R. Donaldson — Probably the weakest part of this trilogy is Donaldson’s purply prose, but that’s not a problem for film as long as whoever adapts the screenplay doesn’t fall into the same trap. Hollywood’s probably not ready for the fantasy anti-hero, but there’s plenty of juicy cinematic bits to move things along. It’d be worth the price of admission just to see a cool visual treatment of the Bloodguard and of Saltheart Foamfollower.

_Snow Crash_, by Neal Stephenson — Take out the chapter-long disquisitions on the nam-shub of enki, and you have a very cinematic book here. Plus, it’d be fun at cocktail parties to let it drop that the book was written in ’92, _before_ a lot of the stuff in it was even on the horizon, whereas now a lot of it seems pretty darn topical. (Well, not the Mafia running pizza delivery, but we can dream.) On second thought, why would you ever want to be at a cocktail party attended by people who’ve never read _Snow Crash_?

_Lord of Light_, by Roger Zelazny — Because _Amber_ wouldn’t really work as a movie, but you’ve got to get that Zelazny dialogue up on the screen somehow. Vedic godlings, high tech, demon spirits, and a monkey dude: how can you go wrong?

Remember that thrill of walking around with you first laptop? “All my documents, all my email, everything I ever wrote, is _right here with me_.” I’ve finally joined the other kids on the block and taken the next step: a “USB keychain drive”:http://www.memorexthumbdrive.com/products/idx_th32507725.htm. It can’t hold _everything_, but easily stores all of it that isn’t collecting dust anyway. It saves the trouble of constantly having to sync the laptop and the desktop, and lets me access my stuff on somebody else’s computer if I need to. Plus, it’s all _right here in my pocket_. That’s so cool.

I’m still stuck on the properly cool solution to my next geeky problem, though: how to play mp3s located on my computer on the the ol’ surround-sound stereo system hooked up to the TV? Running cable is too much of a pain. A basic “FM transmitter”:http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/audio/64fb/ works fine for the car but the quality isn’t up to snuff at home — I tried. And the “Squeezebox”:http://www.slimdevices.com/, while a super-cool toy, is just too expensive. I guess I’ll have to wait until stuff like that comes down in price. Or until I run out patience — whichever comes first.

* Rivka of “Respectful for Otters”:http://respectfulofotters.blogspot.com/ has good commentary on Abu Ghraib and the Taguba report. Start “here”:http://respectfulofotters.blogspot.com/2004_05_01_respectfulofotters_archive.html#108381084919257440. Via “Electrolite”:http://www.nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/.
* I complimented Ginmar “yesterday”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000395.html — “this recent piece”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/ginmar/263985.html#cutid1 is particularly good.
* Slacktivist “tackles”:http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2004/05/on_your_knees.html the National Day of Prayer.
* And Jim’s “posting poetry”:http://www.highclearing.com/archivesuo/week_2004_05_02.html#005322 again. I’d like to think my nagging a part in that.

Looking over at the now vastly-expanded blogroll, you may think that my blogreading has expanded of late. Actually, the opposite is true — there’s been _less_ time for online reading, which has meant reading blogs rather poorly, with more skimming and skipping-over than actual reading. Rather than continue down that road I’ve started trying to read fewer blogs, better. I’ve always wanted the blogroll to reflect what I actually read regularly, which is why I’ve resisted turning it into the vast sea of mutual links and other nods that seem to be the norm. But it pains me not to link to blogs that I _wish_ I had time to read, if time for reading blogs wasn’t competing with time for other online reading, to say nothing of good ol’ offline reading and actual blogwriting and, y’know, raising my daughter.

Hence, yet another subdivision, hopefully the last one for a while. We still have the Top Five and Friends sections, but for the rest I’ve thrown in many blogs that I read only on occasion, but nevertheless respect highly. This expanded list has been divided into Regular Reads — the ones I keep up with faithfully — and The Rest. I’ll continue to highlight additions to the Regular Reads each month, but changes to The Rest will go unannounced.

And so, the big additions this month:

* The livejournal of gaming luminary “Robin D. Laws”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/robin_d_laws/ is now a regular read. It’s not even his gaming content that’s the highlight of his blog, but rather his Neologisms of the Moment and little slices of Toronto life.
* Also added: “A View from a Broad”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/ginmar/, which many of you will already be familiar with. For those who aren’t: it’s the livejournal of a female soldier in Iraq, cat lover, Buffy fan, fine writer. The whole “is she _really_ writing from Iraq?” discussion has come and gone, as it did with Salam Pax. She’s for real, and her descriptions of military life in Iraq are invaluable.

The _Empress of China_ was the first trading vessel that the independent United States sent to China. (Under British rule, the Colonies were forbidden from engaging in trade with Asia.) Among its cargo was 57,687 lbs of ginseng from the mountains of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Who knew that China had to _import_ ginseng? Not me, anyway.

On the return trip, the majority of the ships hold was given over to 284,000 lbs of — what? Anyone? Anyone? Find the answer in the comments.

Ella and I were down at Penn’s Landing this afternoon, checking out the old WWII submarine and the USS Olympia, Admiral Dewey’s flagship at the Battle of Manila. Afterward we stopped for a few minutes at a park bench. Nearby, an attractive, very pregnant young woman was watching two young boys—her sons, it turned out—scampering around. They were ignoring her warnings not to get too close to the water, and she was starting to get exasperated, but smiled when she saw a slim, muscular guy—nineteen years old, if that—with bright auburn hair in a crew cut sauntering toward them.

“Look, kids!” she cried. “It’s Uncle Frankie!”

For the next few minutes her brother played with the kids, grabbing one or the other and pretending to toss them into the water. In the brief intervals when he stopped to talk to her, it became clear that he was on leave from Iraq, but was only in Philly for a day or two. There was a certain intensity to the way he played with those kids, as if to get as much possible roughhousing crammed into a short period of time. His sister was relaxed and upbeat when they were talking, but when the three boys were out running around, she watched from a distance and fought back tears.

Heading back toward town Ella and I came across an anti-war protest at a busy street corner. On one side a man wearing an oversized skull on his head stood next to a “US OUT OF IRAQ” sign. Across the intersection from him, a cluster of protesters milled around a young guy with deep red hair. He was pacing back and forth, speaking into a microphone—it was the sound of his tirade carrying over quite a distance that had drawn me there, curious, like many others in the crowd that had formed to watch.

He was engaging in a freeform rant. When I got there he was in the middle of laying into the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections—apparently one of the contractors implicated in the abuses at Abu Ghraib has a checkered history as a corrections officer here. But the speech swung wildly from that subject to invectives against Rumsfeld and Bush and back again. Most of what he said I agreed with on a purely factual level, but he was raving, and most of the crowd seemed to be either bemused or annoyed by his performance.

Uncle Frankie walked up his sister and her kids—they were crossing the street directly in front of the redhead with the microphone. Frankie had his attention focused on nephews, and was deliberately ignoring the protesters. But while they were waiting for the light to turn green, Frankie’s sister was watching the speaker with obvious distaste. She said something I couldn’t quite hear: “You know, my brother fought . . .”

I watched the guy with the microphone carefully to see what he would do. Let it go, I thought to myself, Just let it go. But he didn’t. “Then your brother is one of the people whose lives Donald Rumsfeld is playing with!” he shouted.

And that was the truth, but it was spoken at the worst possible time and in the worst possible tone, and the damage was worse than many a lie. The light turned green and Frankie made a point of shepherding the kids across the street. His sister came along, but was looking back the whole time, shouting at the guy with the microphone, arguing with him. He kept going right back at her, stupidly raising his voice, even though he was one who you could already hear three blocks away. That event clinched it for a bunch of suits standing in front of the hotel behind me. “What an asshole,” one of them said, and they headed back indoors.

And he was. It’s one of the ironies of war that I’m full of admiration for Frankie even while we almost certainly disagree when it comes to policy on the war—a point on which the asshole and I probably share plenty of views, even though I was angry at him for undercutting an important message with his insensitive vitriol. But I know how he must feel. Watching our country slide headlong into disaster, helpless to stop it, sometimes shouting from the street corner seems like the only option.

I walked away saddened by the whole episode; Ella, meanwhile, was mildly amused by the guy with the skull head. Where will we be when she’s old enough to be sad about these things too?

Only one reader has stepped up to participate in the “Ask Me Anything”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000389.html blogmeme so far. That’s OK; I’m sure the throngs are right around the corner, right guys? Guys? Right? Anyway, these questions come from “Ana”:http://winterfell.blogs.com/anacoqui/. See also Glen’s answers to my three questions over on “Immediacy”:http://www.engel-cox.org/iArchives/001473.html#001473.

_How much sleep have you had this week?_

As a mother of two, Ana knows to ask. The answer: about six hours a night. Ella generally sleeps through the night, so it ain’t that bad. Yes, I know I’m very lucky.

_Have you played Pre-historic Settlers of Catan?_

Ana is referring to “The Settlers of the Stone Age”:http://kumquat.com/cgi-kumquat/funagain/14002, Klaus Teuber’s latest offering. I’ve only played it once, at a demo table at Gencon. It was fun, but not run-out-and-buy-it fun; even when I saw copies for 30% off at the WOTC liquidation sale last month, I didn’t pick one up. I wish Teuber’s Settlers variants had a little more . . . variance, I guess. Still, I’d be happy to try Stone Age again given the chance.

_What is your pick for the movie of the summer?_

Qualifier: Not being plugged in to the upcoming movie clue train, I’m only considering Movies with Big Buzz.

Well, it’d have to be “Troy”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332452/, because I think Brad Pitt’s going to make a _great_ Achilles.

Ha! I jest. Brad Pitt is too short and scrappy to be Achilles. He’d be all right for Paris (though Orlando Bloom fits well there too), but even better as Patroclus — if you know what I mean. Achilles should be played by someone bigger, more muscular, and _younger_ than practically everyone else on the field: the guy who played Colossus in “X2”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290334/, or someone like that.

The real contenders:

“Spider-Man 2”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0316654/ — Great trailer. Loved the first movie. Sam Raimi’s the man.

“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0304141/ — I’m a big fan of the books but disliked the first two movies rather strongly. But this one has a “good director”:http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0190859/, so there’s hope. What’s the man behind _Y Tu Mama Tambien_ going to do with the Harry/Ron/Hermione trio? Insert off-color joke here.

“The Village”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368447/ — The “trailer”:http://www.apple.com/trailers/touchstone/the_village/index.html is quintessential M. Night. Looks gorgeous. This one has the most promise of the three — it could be Shyamalan’s next big step, but it could also be _Signs_ redux. Ever the movie optimist, I have high hopes. I’ll call this one my official pick.

A pleasant Philadelphia morning. Sun streaming in the hotel window. Complimentary coffee brewing. Ella’s kicking around on the bed, delighted to be somewhere new. Only one thing missing: Morning Edition.

“Having wi-fi here in the hotel room is great.” I say that to Suanna because it takes me all of five seconds to hop onto NPR’s website and find the frequency for the local station, instead of having to root around for it on the dial. But, wouldn’t you know it, the first words we hear are these: “It’s pledge week here at WHYY . . .”

Noooooo!!

We put up with it for fifteen minutes, and I’m starting to despair of ever making it through the morning, when it hits me: _we have wi-fi here in the hotel room_. Five seconds later, I’m streaming unadulterated NPR through the laptop, and all is right with the world.

(It’s not the superhero name I would have picked for myself, but hey . . .)

Two weeks ago it was “Livonia”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000374.html; this time it’s Philly. Suanna has a meeting here for the next couple days, and, not wanting to be away from “Ella”:http://www.polytropos.org/ella/ for even that long — entirely understandable; I’m a fan of the girl too — she asked me to come along.

We only just got in, but contrasts between this and the last nanny mission already abound. Livonia: flat, lots of wide boulevards, strip malls, lots of new construction, mostly of Walmarts. Philadelphia: an ancient city — at least by American standards — narrow, tall, bricky. The Holiday Inn in Livonia had a parking lot bigger than the place itself, but “The Latham”:http://www.lathamhotel.com/ has valet parking only, and, I suspect, must take the cars as far as Delaware in order to find a place to put them. The Latham is a “boutique hotel,” which they describe as “European,” which is to say, “cramped.” Actually, no, it’s very cozy, and a far sight nicer than a Holiday Inn. But traveling with a baby means traveling with the accompanying Infant Infrastructure, which is enough to make any hotel room feel cramped.

Finding free wi-fi won’t be a problem, because it’s available right here at the hotel: now _that’s_ what I call boutique!