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Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The plural of "fish" is not "fishes"


I just walked in the door from a trip to both the library and the bookstore. Oh, why have I of all human beings been so blessed?! And it's raining today. And I went to the grocery store. Oh, why oh, why is today so awesome? 

Ahem. I'm just, really jovial today. It's awesome! 

At Borders I was speed walking through the door when I just happened to catch, out of the very corner of my eye, the big words AMY TAN on the clearance rack outside. And so I bought a $6 hardcover copy of Saving Fish from Drowning, and the inside jacket says this: 
"It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flip and twirl. 'Don't be scared,' I tell those fishes. 'I am saving you from drowning.' Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes."
Even more interesting is the Albert Camus quotation on the title page, "The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding." And from what reviews I've read, the book was a flop. But it's a silly story, while at the same time a political commentary, and it was quite a steal. So yay for Amy Tan!

While I was at Borders, there was a buy-two-get-one-free sale on Moleskine! I'm such a sucker for sales. (And suffice to say, I'm kind of broke now.) I rashly stocked up on cashier books, yeah, I finally bought a lined one. We'll see if I like it better than the unlined. I also bought a book of Spanish poems (which is neat, because as an English speaker I can't appreciate the inference of a poem in Spanish, but the poem translated to English has irregular meter and rhyme, so it adds so much depth to the poem to have the side-by-side translation), and a side-by-side translation of some famous Spanish short stories. Yes, I'm branching out into world literature, wewt!

Oh, but dear friends, what I got from the library is almost better! On the account of being, you know, free. I grabbed The Turn of the Screw and Slaughterhouse Five because they were on my reading list . . . so they're principally for the drive to South Carolina. But hey, I love Henry James! I also grabbed two twoddle books, one about a hippy kid who has to go to school when his hippy grandmother is in the hospital, and one period book about some girl in Oxford who's addicted to opiates and has a mysterious secret. Don't judge me. Books are books, whether they're trashy young adult fiction or critically acclaimed classics. 

Adding all of this to the books I'm already in the middle of reading, um, I have a lot of reading to do! I like reading.

7 comments:

Michael Au-Mullaney said...

Your day was remarkably similar to mine :P Library, book store. I didn't go for the Mokeskines though, I was THIS close. I'll get them some other time. Henry James is awesome. Okay, I saw this book in borders that I am going to buy at some point. A Kerouac poetry book, called "book of sketches". It looked (and read) amazingly, I'll have to buy it on amazon...I didn't want to pay the 18 bucks for it. I did get an awesome book though: The oxford guide to philosophy...eight dollars, no joke! :D I'm glad you enjoyed yourself so much today.

Michael Au-Mullaney said...

Oh, and...yeah...the plural of fish actaully IS fishes...but it shouldn't be.

Art said...

Sounds like a wonderful day! :D Books are amazing. That Albert Camus quote is interesting to compare to your thinking about pride being the root of it all. I'm not quite sure about either...

Knowing what is right (not being ignorant) doesn't help if you have no desire to do right (and are prideful). Yet, not all wrong desires stem from pride: you can idolize another, not just yourself. Hum.

On the way to Nats I'm going to read Jayber Crow and That Hideous Strength and The Importance of Being Earnest. :) (And I'm probably not going to finish any of them, I'm going to be distracted by looking at debate flows!)

Shattered Shards said...

Ok that quote on the inside cover sounded gramatically incorrect but mabye it's just me. Is fishes really the plural of fish? Speaking of moleskins, I found the most awesomest wheathered leather journal today online!! It's beast. And tomorrow's library day for me so YAY. I agree with you guys totally, reading is superchillepic!!

Micah E. said...

Mooses.

My duct-tape notebook is falling apart, and I don't know how to fix it (it's already made out of duct-tape) I should probably go buy a moleskine.

Your day was more epic than mine, although I did get a free copy of Blue Like Jazz (Thanks Andrew!)

Andrew said...

You're welcome.

I'm envious of your day, Hayley. Mine didn't go so well. :(

Anonymous said...

Blue Like Jazz...um, really? Let me know how you like it. The comic strips are amazing, but MorningStar was so desperate to get rid of them that we had a "Buy One Get Two Free" sale. No joke. Then we decided that was too desperate-looking.
So, anyway, I love books too! After not reading anything for an entire semester...maybe entire year besides Christmas break...I'm going through them like crazy! Currently reading:
The Robe by Lloyd Douglas
Don't Waste your Life by John Piper
Chaitaine's Guardian by someone
Brave New World by Huxley
And I just checked Echo in the Darkness by F. Rivers out of the library, and bought Sense and Sensability for $5 at Barnes and Noble.
I've got variety too, lol.