The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Emily H.:

Ah, but Xopher is a vegetarian, is that not correct? Which complicates the issue. I would not try being vegetarian in Japan, although certainly it could be done; it's just that a lot of Japanese people have trouble grasping that when you say you don't eat meat, that also means you don't eat (say) fish broth, which is in just about everything. There are specialty Buddhist restaurants, and macrobiotic restaurants, and tofu restaurants, but it would be hard to travel with a laissez-faire "Oh, I'll pick something up at the next food court" kind of attitude.

As a Canadian immigrant-or-expat in the U.S., the passport requirement has been really worrying; until just recently, Canadians living abroad needed a guarantor who was a member of a narrow set of professions (lawyer, doctor) who has known you for two years; my freelancing sister hasn't had a doctor in years, and I've moved every two years since college.

They changed the rules so that we can be each other's guarantors, thank goodness...

Born '82.

I don't remember the Berlin wall; I was living in France and allowed to watch very little television.

I do remember the first Gulf War--I remember my teacher writing on the third-grade classroom blackboard that it was over-- and Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings.

I remember hearing about AIDS on TV and wondering why there was such a fuss about it because wasn't aid a good thing?

Nothing at all before I was eight. That seems late, but when I was older I found books like "Talking to your children about nuclear war" on the parental bookshelf-- I find it easy to believe that my parents insulated me from some of the scary stuff.

(It wasn't until I was rummaging through my parents' bookshelves and found that book that I even considered the possibility that I might personally be affected by nuclear war, though of course I knew about nuclear weapons before that. There's something ironic about being so startled by a book that's supposed to be reassuring.)

Last night my friend of ten years told me that she tried, if badly, to kill herself when we were in high school.

(I knew, at the time, that she was depressed and untreated for it; I was terribly scared for her; but I thought I was overreacting.)

Sometimes we never realize how thin the ice is, and how cold the water underneath. I don't know how we survived those years.

I really enjoyed the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation of Karamazov; it seemed to capture some of the flavor of the Russian syntax (I could sort of imagine everyone speaking their dialogue in Russian accents) while not being overly literal or stilted.

In general I have a hard time trusting any book that makes Sweeping Generalizations.

For example, I gave up on Bryson's "The Mother Tongue" when it asserted that thesauruses do not exist in any language other than English. This is false. There are Japanese thesauruses and French ones. But even if I hadn't been aware of that-- that's the kind of statement that I don't want to trust unless I can get some independent confirmation.

(Truthfully? It's beginning to sound like any mainstream layperson's book is suspect. Which is depressing, but a little believable; getting a book to a manageable size with a lot of interesting stories may require editing out some of the complexities and ambiguities...)

Jim Macdonald, I wanted to thank you for these posts.

I was working alone in the library when I saw a guy slumped over a desk. "He's hung over," I thought, "Or really sleepy." First dumb mistake. I went to help someone make a copy and returned to find the guy unconscious on the floor. Started to call 911. Saw the guy start to get up, and nearly hung up on them--but stopped myself and asked, "Do you need help?" He did. And I stayed on the line and tried to keep a cool head as the paramedics came. (Embarrassing thought: "What if my boss comes in while the library is full of paramedics?")

I made a number of mistakes. I should've acted quicker. Should've done what I could to help the guy while someone else called 911. I knew this stuff. But I shudder at how badly I would've done if I hadn't read these posts...

At least the guy is okay.

And, hah, I forgot my original point, which was:

The last thing we need is more obscure conservative books being hawked on the internet, sending people to the library to demand them.

Okay, it's very hard to feel sorry for the authors who are being ripped off.

Feel sorry for the libraries.

Every so often we get a person who wants a copy of an obscure book: sometimes self-published, sometimes a small publisher that's a step removed from self-publishing, sometimes just a book that's very old. And said person is very, very upset that we don't stock the book. Our failure to stock the book is part of a liberal conspiracy. (Did you know that ALA wants to corrupt children with teh sex and teh communism? Yeah). We must interlibrary-loan the book (at considerable expense).

To be fair, I've gotten this from a liberal once, who proceeded to harangue me for fifteen minutes about the state of the country ("Yes, that's true...") and the state of library funding ("Oh, I absolutely agree..."). But nine times out of ten, it's people who want some conservative Bible prophecy wingnutry.

After the breakup of a relationship, being filled with despair and having to go to the skanky grocery across the street on account of having no car, I took to correcting their spelling. (This was a Food Lion, not a mom 'n' pop establishment run by immigrants, whose misspellings I would not dream of correcting).

I don't actually want to be a copy editor. But there was something soothing about being able to filter my anger into "It's spelled CINNAMON, dammit!"

Ten years ago, my sister and I consulted and decided that we would try out that new show that was coming on TV.

Half an hour in, we consulted again and decided that it was boring.

What on earth were we thinking? I don't know--perhaps the same general squeamishness that kept me from watching Star Wars for so long (because it was about war). It's only thanks to the musical episode* and file-sharing and Netflix that I've started to catch up now.

And I listen to the Spanish dub to improve my Spanish (with the subtitles turned on so I don't miss the puns and one-liners). If any hispanic vampires frequent the library where I work, I'm golden.

*I love musical theatre on odd subjects. In my YA novel-in-progress, the characters are putting on a musical called Totally Sweet Ninja Death Squad.

SF for a young reading level:

Katherine Applegate's Animorphs series
Jane Yolen's been mentioned upthread, but specifically, she has an early reader series about Commander Toad that is worth looking into.
Seconding Bruce Coville and Artemis Fowl.

The Star Wars: Young Jedi Apprentice books are also right around that level. And, in "books we can't keep on the shelves at our library," there's the Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne, though that's time-traveling historical fantasy and may not be science fictionny enough.

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