{"id":2307,"date":"2005-01-12T17:41:25","date_gmt":"2005-01-12T22:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2307"},"modified":"2022-03-21T10:08:22","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T14:08:22","slug":"a-hugely-incoherent-post-that-goes-all-over-the-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2307","title":{"rendered":"Books To Track Down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just received my very own copy of <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0807842303?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=thesheivari-20&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325&#038;creativeASIN=0807842303\">The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=thesheivari-20&#038;l=as2&#038;o=1&#038;a=0807842303\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/><\/i>.  Y<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a gorgeous book!  It&#8217;s HUGE!  It&#8217;s MASSIVE.  It will weigh down my book bag, and I already can&#8217;t wait to dive right in.  Now, I used to have a copy of it, from a second-hand store, I think.  And it got lost in all of the moving that I do.  I lost track of it.  I thought that perhaps it wasn&#8217;t in print anymore, not sure &#8230; the copy I originally had looked like it had been published shortly after the simultaneous death of Adams and Jefferson on July 4, 1826 (can never write that fact down without feeling a small chill\/thrill) &#8211; My copy was old, and battered.  But alas.  I lost it.  Between Los Angeles and San Fran and Chicago and New York &#8230; I don&#8217;t know.  It&#8217;s in a garage somewhere.<\/p>\n<p>I have a couple of books on a list in my head.  These books are all out-of-print or hard to find and I have them on a &#8216;MUST TRACK DOWN SOMEDAY&#8217; list in my head.  The correspondence, though, wasn&#8217;t on that list.  I guess I just forgot about it for a while or something.<\/p>\n<p><b>Side note:<\/b>  The MAIN book on that &#8220;Must Track Down&#8221; list was <i>I Was a Teenage Dwarf<\/i>, the classic book written in the 1950s by Max Shulman, starring the unnaturally short teenage lady-killer Dobie Gillis. I was on a MISSION to find that book after being <i>kicked out of my high school library<\/i> while reading it, because <i>my guffaws of laughter<\/i> were disturbing the peace.  That Dwarf book has been out of print for YEARS, but I never forgot how hard it made me laugh, and every time I went into a 2nd hand book store, ANYwhere, I would look for a copy.  I searched at flea markets, libraries, periodically I&#8217;d go check The Strand &#8230; This search went on for years.  Literally.  Remember, we&#8217;re talking pre-eBay years.  Finally, after YEARS of this, I told my dad about my never-ending search.  He said, casually, &#8220;Oh, we have about 10 copies at the library.  I&#8217;ll send you one.&#8221;  Duh.  Forgot to ask the one person who could actually help me out.  A copy of that beloved book arrived in the mail 5 days later, and I read it in my apartment, and laughed JUST as hard as I had when I was 16.  I HOWLED.  I had to put the book down at times, and just guffaw, waves of hysteria breaking over me &#8230; This time I disturbed the peace of my neighbors, not the high school library.  To find the book STILL that funny??  Max Shulman, wherever you are, I. Love. You.)<\/p>\n<p>I am still reading <i>American Sphinx<\/i> and LOVING it.  I have re-entered the world of <i>Underworld<\/i>, after being out of it for a while.  I have, for the moment, put down <i>Great Terror<\/i> because I have the feeling I can&#8217;t read that one on the side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just received my very own copy of The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams. Y It&#8217;s a gorgeous book! It&#8217;s HUGE! It&#8217;s MASSIVE. It will weigh down my book bag, and I already &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2307\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[1494,258,924],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2307"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174588,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307\/revisions\/174588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}