There was one thing I failed to mention about the beach: Wickles.
My Uncle Mike and his wife Betty joined us for the first day, and Mike brought 2 jars of Wickles… Wicked Pickles. They are a spectacularly well-seasoned pickles. He got them in the Publix out there in S.C., but steakums couldn’t find them in our local Publix.
I may resort to ordering them online. De-lish.
Challenges are attempts to ban a book from libraries.
The Most Frequently Challenged Books 1990-2000
Be a rebel! Go read A Wrinkle in Time, or worse, To Kill A Mockingbird. Once you’ve debased yourself thusly, why not crush what’s left of your humanity with A Light in the Attic?
The Dark Design by Philip Jose Farmer (third book in the Riverworld Series)
I’ve already documented the possible familial ties I have to Mr. Farmer.
In the Riverworld, a planet of one long river valley with sides so high they cannot be climbed, everyone who ever lived is reincarnated at age 25 with no disease or aging, and all needs taken care of. The throughline story is: why? and, how? And, by whom?
In the second book, Samuel Clemens built a Fabulous Riverboat to get to the head of the River, had it stolen by King John, then built another one. Then everyone said, hey, wait a minute… how about a blimp?
In this book, they built a blimp or two. And drove it to the mysterious tower at the pole of the world. And we’re still not completely sure what’s going on. We have rumors.
Book 4, on it’s way via PaperBackSwap.com, promises to provide all the answers.
We shall see.
The Adrian Mole Diaries by Sue Townsend
(Compilation of the first two Adrian Mole novels, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 and The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole.)
I have no idea why I ended up reading this book.
Well, some. But I can’t reconstruct the process completely.
It started with this line from Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt by Nick Hornby:
I haven’t read James Wood’s collection of essays The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel, but I’m counting on Woody to provide a useful counterbalance to that sort of high moral seriousness. So I’m presuming that all of the comic greats– P.G. Wodehouse, the Molesworth books, George and Weedon Grossmith, and so on– are present and correct between its covers.
So, here Nick Hornby, who holds Wodehouse in as high esteem as I do (if not more), has listed some other authors in the same list of comic greats. So, I investigated.
Researching today, the Molesworth books appear to be a series of classic illustrated children’s books. J.K. Rowling got the name of “Hogwarts” from these books.
The Grossmiths worked together on a novel in the late 1800s called The Diary of a Nobody. The main character is Charles Pooter, his son’s name is Lupin. Another J.K. Rowling reference?
Somehow, though, in my original research, I ended up requesting a copy of The Adrian Mole Diaries from PaperBackSwap.com. I’m not sure how that happened, but regardless, it was a good read, though intended for young adults. Another J.K. Rowling thing.
Written in diary format, (a popular British style, to be sure) it tells the story of a young obsessive-compulsive would-be-intellectual boy’s experiences in a dysfunctional family. My favorite excerpt:
SUNDAY MAY 9TH
FOURTH AFTER EASTER, MOTHER’S DAY (USA AND CANADA)
I have just realized that I have never seen a dead body or a real female nipple. This is what comes of living in a culs-de-sac.
Very witty, and true. I grew up in a culs-de-sac, and had seen neither of those things by age 13 3/4 either.
There are later books documenting Adrian’s life at various stages:
# The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole (more teenage years)
# Adrian Mole and the Small Amphibians (more teenage years)
# Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years (aged 23 3/4 years)
# Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years (aged 30 years)
# Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction (aged 33 3/4 years)
The last book is set in 2002, so Adrian is roughly my age. Though, in British years, he may be older. I’m not sure of the conversion rate.