#280

The kids and I buy used books at Goodwill. Paperbacks are ninety cents. It's so affordable, it feels like stealing. It's unpredictable, exhilarating, maybe like digging for treasure, panning gold, diving shipwrecks, raiding tombs, sifting through the attics of centenarians. None of which I've done except steal. But only small things, like Halloween candy from M 'n' m, and a friend's Cal Ripken rookie card (that was thirty years ago but I remember it vividly; my conscience kicked in and I was sleepless and panic-stricken until I made it right). Sometimes, the Goodwill gives up gems. Other times we leave disenchanted. I use the term 'we' loosely. It's usually just me mumbling, huffing, reading spines with my head tilted gaping at the bookshelves. Meg wanders off looking for crafty stuff. Michael stands around half-interested. If I recommend something, he'll take a look, but he's not wild-eyed and rabid like his dad. (He's very calm in the batters box also, so I let him be him without fussing about it.) Thumbing through books at Barnes & Noble is fun too, but everything's twenty bucks. Even so, we also buy plenty of crisp, shiny, new-smelling, new books at retailers at full price. Karma is important here; we don't want any giants from the great beyond – Melville, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, London, L'Amour, Leonard, Trevanian, Robert B. Parker – pissed at us. So we give real money to books (and presumably authors) on top of our Goodwill habit. And we donate books back, although I underline, highlight, scribble in, dog-ear, and batter most of mine. It kind of renders them permanently under my ownership. Is this purposeful? Only if the books are good. I hope M 'n' m love stories and books as much as they love Minecraft, Xbox, and iPads.

I have a library at home, and I'm willing to share, but if the kids borrow one of my annotated favorites, they better agonize over its care. They better pamper and polish and return it better than before. Naturally, I'm thinking of cars now, and how Michael will drive soon. That's fine. I'm fine. Everything's fine. Kidding; I'm more worried about my books.

At Goodwill last time, I saw the title "The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids." I didn't buy it. I didn't even look at it.

If you read only one book in your lifetime, it should be "City of Thieves" by David Benioff. If two, "A Soldier of the Great War" by Mark Helprin.

I don't know if TV news has always been a caricature of itself, but it is today. Interviews can be interesting, and short pieces informative, but outrageousness and negativity dominate so much I wonder how they'll take it further. They will take it further. It's the same in print news. They'll out-do themselves in unimaginable ways I'm sure; maybe our screens themselves will bleed and weep and gasp at every controversy. That sounds callous, but I'd like M 'n' m to see non-dramatized positive news, also. Maybe, by definition, that's not news. Of course, 'reality TV' isn't news either. And sports are sports. I understand the psychology and strategy (for profit) behind over-covering pain and fear. But the unrestraint makes it feel like everything is a bit from 'Saturday Night Live,' 'Ron Burgandy,' or 'The Onion.' It's a Frankenstein now, on steroids, drugs, and edited for maximum shock. I try to minimize my exposure; I skim headlines and avoid TV news altogether. I don't want this to be M 'n' m's serious impression of what 'news' should be; the concept and service has a place in our lives, just not in its current form of sensationalized ridiculousness. I know it's always been lusty for hysteria and destruction and the shattering of heroes, but it seems to be ratcheting up its invasiveness and ubiquity, trying to secure a kind of distorted omniscience. Technology plays a part, obviously. Is there a 'normal' anymore, a safe haven, an outlet for 'just the news?' Of course there is, and there's backlash and always counter-movements for silence, nature, privacy, decorum. This is how it's always been. I'm just getting old and crotchety. But Trump won five more states tonight.