Kayden Kross Official Blog: The Book Thief, and other regrettable losses @ Kayden Kross's Official Site

Saturday, February 6, 2010

The Book Thief, and other regrettable losses

It started with a poster. "It's not a poster, it's a painting," the sales woman corrected in irritation. I looked at it more closely. It's a damn poster. It just looks cool because it's printed on canvas.

I don't really care either way. I just know it needed to be on my wall in all of it's unoriginal glory. I whipped out my card and told her to wrap up my painting. She gave me a look that suggested I wasn't the best home for it, I was undeserving of such a fine piece. But I was the only home offering. I was the only home in the entire store for that matter. She ran the card. It's not that I don't love it. I just know that no artist's brush has ever touched that canvas. A printer touched that canvas, and somewhere out in the world there are more like it, printer-touched in exactly the same way.

It made me itch for something original. I needed something with sweat on it, or at least fingerprints. I signed the merchant copy of the receipt and headed to the adjacent store. The place looked like some sort of spiritual industrial burial ground/reincarnation center, where small construction equipment and government discards circa 1950 go to die in peace, knowing they'll come back as a one-of-a-kind $500 lamp to be proudly displayed in the middle of some artist's raw loft downtown. The place is lawless. Finished pieces are stacked on top of pieces in the works on top of junk. Prices change day to day, spiking or plummeting by fifty and 100% depending on who's working and whether he remembers the original price he quoted you. Whether sales tax is tacked on to the final price is another matter of whim, and delivery is free, because the entire relevant customer base lives within walking distance of the store anyway.

As I walked through the randomly laid pieces in their various stages of completion I kept finding what I wanted, then finding something better and forgetting the thing before it. Finally I settled on the best thing, a refurbished locker-room bench. I had the perfect spot for it. The style would be seamless with the rest of my loft. As the employee and I discussed various price points that the bench might fall in I looked through the pile of junk to some of the finished junk in the back and saw an even more perfect bench, still from a locker room but refurbished with metal bars running underneath. I switched my negotiations to the new best-thing in the store and 5 minutes later was running out to grab cash for the purchase and meet him back at my loft to welcome home my new gym bench/unofficial bookshelf. As a rule of thumb in my loft, anything that can house books, will.

So that's why I was rearranging books tonight. I like to store them by genre and author. Toni Morrison has her own section, along with Rand, Orwell, Atwood, Bukowski, Faulkner, Augusten Burroughs, Chuck Palahniuk, Cormac McCarthy, Kim Edwards, and on and on. Then there is the section for short stories, poetry, periodicals, signed books, the political section, the economics section, biographies, the books that were so bad I couldn't finish them, the books I have yet to read, and of course I keep my textbooks. I did this as a kid with The Boxcar Children and Walter Farley just as my grandpa did with every book that passed through his hands in 35 years of teaching. Old habits die hard and genetics die harder. I'm fighting both.

In my intensive rearrangement session (the new gym bench went to Atwood, Bukowski, Neil Boortz, short stories, and Stieg Larson (new find)), I discovered a travesty. Every time I move this happens but I swear this last move took the greatest toll. I'm missing books. Lots of books. From Faulkner I'm missing "The Sound and the Fury" and "A Light in August", from Atwood I'm missing "The Handmaid's Tale" and "Oryx and Crake". From McCarthy I'm missing "The Road." I'm missing "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak. I'm missing 3 out of 4 of my Dan Brown books but that's OK because A: everything went downhill after "The DaVinci Code" and B: I know I'm missing those ones because I lent them out. I'm missing "The Hours" and that's tragic, because the only thing I really appreciated about Virginia Woolf was the book that was about her, not the ones actually written by her. I feel like I'm eating lace when I read her work. "Orlando" is in the I-couldn't-bring-myself-to-finish-it section.

I'm missing everything by Anita Shreve but the only title I actually remember was "All He Ever Wanted", and I remember identifying too much with the female and feeling like the main character was a dumbass, and I don't think that's what poor Anita was going for. I guess it's best that I don't have that book. I had the "He's Just Not That Into You" books, and I thought they were fine pieces of comedic genius. I loved pulling them out on friends. That era is apparently behind us now.

I can't imagine how all of the books I don't care about managed to survive the move. I guess I wouldn't have noticed if they didn't though. I have a book called "Dark Horse" that's been haunting me for years. It needs to go. On an equally tragic note, I realized that I only had one book by Barry Hannah, and that one is in the top 5 on my list of all time favorites (It's called "Yonder Stands Your Orphan"). A good friend gave me a signed copy of one of the first edition hardcovers for Christmas one year. That one will never fall victim to a careless move. Maybe I just shouldn't risk moving anymore.

posted by Kayden Kross on 10:07 PM :: 8 comments

8 Comments:

Between you and my daughter, I could open a branch of a library. Can I make money doing that?

Kayden, you are well read, nicely bred and gives good head. I like that in a woman.

By Mike-Wag, at February 7, 2010 2:06 AM

First off let me say that's a sweet ass table/bookshelf/bench you got there.

Knowing how much you love books that is really a big lost. Loosing your favorite books in a move and or lending them out and forgetting who has then.

Okay that lady really needs to chill cause she only saw your exterior and she thought you are just another pretty face. Not knowing that you have extensive knowledge of things like: Authors that she may or not know of or even heard of, seen artistic movies that she couldn't even understand, And a understanding of the world around us(streetwise and professionalism). If it would had been I would had gave her a fuck you too look. (:

That burial/dump site sounds like a really cool store a to buy house fixtures and other things. It sounds like a store I would buy everything for the home, bath, etc.

So Grandpa was a teacher for 35 years? Holy shit man now I see why your so damn smart and have so much in that head of yours. Wow!! If it wasn't for the fact that you have a blog or what not. I don't other people outside your circle of friends/co-workers would know who and how you are really.

About not wanting to risk the safety of your books in a careless move. just make an inventory of all the books you have now and of the ones you lost/lent out.

xoxoxoxooxoxoxoxo

By XxSiCxX81, at February 7, 2010 7:01 AM

I empathize, Kayden. My wife and I also squirrel away books. When we moved north of Sac 6 years ago we brought 14 boxes of books. Another 18 went to my parent's house in Walnut Creek because we did not have room. We both have kept every book ever read.

By Jim, at February 7, 2010 9:04 AM

wow im like shocked nobody has commented on this yet, im pretty sure when you tweeted about your "wild" saturday night most people thought it be something raunchy (to be honest including myself), but i was pleasantly surprised to find something pretty refreshing for a change. your prose is light and the post was definitely a fun read. keep it up i hope you got more coming soon :)

By mach4threat, at February 7, 2010 10:36 AM

Hey Kayden, you know if you want to see a work of art so beautiful it's considered priceless .. just look in the mirror !!!

I'd also like it if you would be my girlfriend .. mainly so I could tell people that you're my Kross to bear !!!

Leeman Rhymes
x

By Lee, at February 9, 2010 10:38 AM

Missing two of Faulkner's best works, "The Sound and the Fury" and "Light in August" should be considered a crime, but I wouldn't charge you with anything because am sending them to you soon to bail you out.

By Glenn, at February 9, 2010 11:23 AM

This post has been removed by the author.

By boatbutter, at February 10, 2010 7:11 AM

Sorry about your missing books - but I have a theory: Even though we often develop attachments to books (one of mine is "Pillars of the Earth", not all of our books develop attachments to us. Meaning, once we've grasped the basic concept or experienced the specific joy or wonder of certain books and can expand upon them with our own thoughts and keep their memory safely wrapped in our hearts, the books inexplicably find their way into new, uninitiated hands with the intent of bestowing their tale upon the unenlightened or less fortunate. At least, that's what I prefer to believe....seems a bit more romantic than the alternative. But that's just me.

By John Taylor, at February 11, 2010 7:02 AM