Saturday, December 20, 2008

Reading Anxiety

Besides constantly nagging my poor mother to buy me must haves like Nancy Drew Mysteries, poetry books, and two sets of encyclopedias... there was the Scholastic Book Club order form.



The Scholastic Book Club gave me much anxiety as a child. We'd get the book descriptions and order form and I'd start to feel dizzy. I'd want many of the books listed. My mother would only allow me to order one or (rarely) two. Bargaining with her was like going in to ask the boss for a raise every few weeks, and the boss just dreads seeing you, sometimes feels sorry for you, but no way in hell are you getting that raise.

Try to explain to a hardworking mom just why you can't live without Silly & Annoying Jokes & Riddles or yet another book about teenager who discovers she's adopted and has a meltdown. There were some kids at school who never ordered a book, but I only noticed the kids who flaunted the fact that they had ordered six books. (Six books!) I never ever ordered more than two books, and I agonized over the order form for days ~ like a true readaholic drama queen. Nevermind the fact that there were better books at the library. The Scholastic Book Club was like a cult and I was a fully hooked follower.

It's summertime and Holly is going away to college in the fall. She stops going steady with Bernie, meets Tony, and then uncovers a secret that threatens to shatter her life !

3 comments:

tut-tut said...

Do you remember Calling All Girls magazine? I think I knit something from it, and I probably have the pattern somewhere in a box.

L was Scholastically inclined. I don't think the schools I went to subscribed to this plan. But I have lots of N Drews around. Plus the Happy Hollisters. Did you encounter them??

Avid Reader said...

Happy Hollister, no, I'll have to check them out.

but I did have all my older sibling's old books --a set of Billy Whiskers, a set of Bobbsey Twins, Mrs. Wiggs of The Cabbage Patch, Little Women, Mrs. Pigglewiggle and my brother's 7th grade earth science or biology textbook-- he'd misplaced it, had to pay for it, but found it someplace.He gave it to me because I liked the pictures of frogs and turtles and crocodiles so much .... these books made up my prized collection of hardbound books!

Avid Reader said...

Calling all Girls --yes... !

My Classic Fiction Book List -Partial List

  • Austen, Jane: (Complete Works)
  • Balzac: Cousin Bette/ Eugenie Grandet / Cousin Pons
  • Best Russian Short Stories
  • Boyle, TC: Short Works
  • Brennan, Maeve : Short Works, 1 Novella
  • Bronte, Emily, Ann, Jane (Complete Works)
  • Brookner, Anita ( Complete Works)
  • Cather, Willa (Complete Works)
  • Chekov: Short Works
  • David Copperfield (Dickens)
  • Dickens:A Tale of Two Cities
  • Dickens:Great Expectations
  • Dickens:Nicholas Nickelby
  • Dickens:Our Mutual Friend
  • Dickens:The Old Curiosity Shop
  • Doyle, Roddy (some novels, memoir)
  • Drabble, Margaret (4 Novels)
  • Drieser, Theodore (Complete Works)
  • Fitzgerald, F.Scott (Most Novels & short works)
  • Hardy, Thomas (Complete Works)
  • Hemingway, Short stories
  • Hemingway: The Old Man in the Sea
  • Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises
  • Hugo: Les Miserables/Hunchback Of ND
  • James, Henry: Daisy Miller
  • James, Henry: In The Cage
  • James, Henry: Portrait of a Lady
  • James, Henry: The Golden Bowl
  • James, Henry: What Maisy Knew
  • James, Henry: Wings of a Dove
  • James, Henry:The Ambassadors
  • James, Henry; The Bostonians
  • Kerouac: Dharma Bums
  • Kerouac: On The Road
  • Kerouac: The Subterraneans
  • Kerouac: Tristessa
  • Lardner,Ring:Short Works
  • Larsen: Quicksand
  • Lewis, Sinclair: Arrowsmith
  • Lewis, Sinclair: Free Air
  • Lewis, Sinclair: Main Street
  • Lewis, Sinclair: The Job
  • MacGill, Patrick (Complete works)
  • Mackin, Walter (novels)
  • Maupassant: Short Works, novels
  • McGahern, John (novels of)
  • McNulty, John (Short Works)
  • Norris, Frank: McTeague
  • O'Brien, Edna (3 Novels)
  • O'Donnell, Paeder : Novels of
  • O. Henry
  • Potok, Chaim (4 novels/1 non fiction)
  • Salinger, JD : Nine Stories
  • Salinger: Franny & Zooey
  • Salinger: Raise High the Roofbeams
  • Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye
  • Sinclair, Lewis: Dodsworth
  • Sinclair, Lewis: Elmer Gantry
  • Sinclair, Upton: King Coal
  • Sinclair, Upton: The Jungle
  • Steinbeck, John: Sweet Thursday
  • Steinbeck: Winter of our Discontent
  • Steinbeck: Cannery Row
  • Steinbeck: East of Eden
  • Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath
  • Theroux, Paul (3 Novels )
  • Toibin, Colm: (Novels of)
  • Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
  • Tolstoy: Short Works
  • Turgenev (2 novels)
  • Twain: T Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi
  • Vonnegut: Early Works (1950s-60s)
  • Wharton, Edith: Novels of/Short Stories
  • Women & Fiction (Edit. Cahill)
  • Zola, Emile ( 10 novels)