How would you convey, with a single image, that sense of emptiness felt when your home suddenly shifts from “full of life” to “just you”? What would remain of the kids once they and all of their belongings are gone? And beyond showing the past, there’s also the idea of a lost future. The one where the children don’t leave, but instead grow and learn and live in your house. How do you indicate what didn’t get to happen?

Like this:

David Drummond explains:

The idea for this cover came from a wall in our house where our kids marked their heights from an early age. I am sure the same wall can be found in any house with children. In the case of the wall markings on the cover there is only one or two entries, as it were, because the children were not there long enough.

I don’t think you have to be a parent for this to have an impact. Those few markings so low to the floor, and all that empty space reaching to the ceiling, is too powerful. I honestly don’t think I would have realized this had the explanation not been given, and I’m glad it was.

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More Room to Grow

Every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch. Once you’ve read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for someone else, as you wish.
….

Points for entering books: you receive a tenth-of-a-point for every book you type into our system, and one point each time you give a book away. In order to keep receiving books, you need to give away at least one book for every three you receive.

The only cost associated with all of this that of shipping your books to those who’ve made the request. The site itself appears to do nothing more than serve as a matchmaker.

As enthusiastic as I am right now about doing this, I have a long and sordid history of initial energy for something followed by little to no follow through. But this time will be different! My fingers are in the crossed position!

Merci Scott Klarr

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The BookMooch Book Exchange

I love The Wire (two season four episodes still to go). One of its most interesting characters is Omar Little, the scourge of Baltimore city drug dealers.

I also really enjoyed Cormac Mccarthy’s book The Road. The complete scrubbing of all quotation marks took getting used to at first. But once you get into the rhythm of the writing, their removal adds a strange sense of intimacy with the characters.

    He looked at his father and then tilted the can and drank. He sat there thinking about it. It’s really good, he said.

    Yes. It is.

    You have some, Papa.

    I want you to drink it.

    You have some.

    He took the can and sipped it and handed it back. You drink it, he said. Let’s just sit here.

The Road has been transformed into a movie, and Omar (Michael K. Williams) is in it as (ironically enough) “The Thief”.

thanks BigScreenLittleScreen

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Omar Moves From The Wire to The Road