belated friday five

Have I done one of these before? Maybe once. Some good questions sometimes.

1. What were your favorite childhood stories?

Usual stuff--Where the Wild Things Are, Dr. Seuss, etc. Was never into The Three Little Pigs or any of that too much that I remember. What was the one about the dog driving a car? Oh yeah, Go! Dog! Go! That ruled.

2. What books from your childhood would you like to share with [your] children?
All the good stuff! Ones mentioned above plus the Oz books and many others. The Baum books are the greatest.

3. Have you re-read any of those childhood stories and been surprised by anything?
For some reason I haven't gone back to any children's lit, but I'm sure I would enjoy it. I would still like to do the Oz books again and pick up the ones I didn't get to. Chronicles of Narnia too--only did about half of those.

4. How old were you when you first learned to read?
I've been told four. Certainly by five. I remember being asked on the first day of first grade who in the class could read, and only Jenny Robinette and I said yes.

5. Do you remember the first 'grown-up' book you read? How old were you?
This is crazy, but I think it was A Confederacy of Dunces. I was in the fifth grade, which would make me 10 or 11. Seems like there should be something before that, but I can't think what it would be. Certainly Confederacy was the first grownup book that had a big effect on me.

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I was just reminded of one of my famous family stories. When I was probably five or so we had to take Schroeder, our dachshund, to the vet. In the car on the way there, I piped up from the back seat, "I wonder if Schroeder's doctor will be a standup dog . . ."

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Nice afternoon. Lazed around and read a bit for a while. I'm finally starting the latest Tom Robbins novel, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates. It came out a couple of years ago, but I just never got around to it. I haven't actually read any Robbins in more than ten years. In 1991-92 I sped through everything he'd published at that point. I was in a fairly good apce (to use pop-psych-speak) despite being drunk as a skunk, and it was the perfect stuff for the mood I was in. I was in jr. college and kicking ass in all my classes, and it was some time before I got severly depressed. By the time his next novel, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, came out in 1994, I wasn't much in the mood for playful nuttiness. Songs of the Doomed was more my speed when I was reading at all, which wasn't often.

Then I checked out West Rock, one of the two mountain ridges in New Haven. The other is called, strangely enough, East Rock.


New Haven skyline from the top of West Rock.



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