I went antiquing over the weekend. Doesn’t that sound grown up? Like I should be sitting in front of a fire sipping a cup of tea from 18th Century china while resting my feet on an early American leather ottoman. Well, it wasn’t that romantic. Mostly because I was in Maryland.
Not there’s anything wrong with Maryland, it’s just not one of the fancier states in my opinion. Now, if I was antiquing for jewelry in New York or scouring for Civil War artifacts in Georgia, that might be worthy of the Antique Roadshow (sad, that PBS symbolizes the pinnacle of success in this business). But alas, I was looking for lamps and mirrors in Maryland to go in my new house, which is currently buried under snow. (Old Man Winter and I have some issues right now.)
But while immersed in furniture antiquities, I did not forget my day job. Not that I could, those places are swimming in books. And thankfully there are a few Nancy Drew enthusiasts in the area. So I picked up a couple hardbacks to contrast with the more modern versions Simon & Schuster put out after that Emma Roberts movie.
The over-designed paperback Nancy Drews I bought in a box set on clearance at Borders. The others I bought for $2/piece at antique stores, one of which (the blue one in the middle), was published somewhere during 1942-1945 (you can tell by the really poor quality, we-can-barely-afford-tree-pulp-because-we’re-at-War paper). The rest are from the ‘60s and 70s.
I’m not really a book collector (unless you count signed YA novels), put I’m rather pleased with my new Nancy Drew shelf, which corresponds to the other mysteries I’ve been reading as research as of late.
And this of course brings to me to more….
MYSTERIOUS HAIKU REVIEWS
NANCY DREW (multiple novels), Carolyn Keene
Love those ghost writers
They created an icon
who now says “You know..”
THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, Arthur Conan Doyle
A coke-snorting sleuth
with super intuition
Mentalist rip off
CASINO ROYALE, A JAMES BOND NOVEL, Ian Fleming
Will shag any girl
but will not notice her brain
Until he’s tortured
VALENTINE’S DAY, the movie
Cute, okay chick flick
If we just had that gay kiss
to rival Brokeback…
POP CULTURE RANT: Ice Skating
I hate this new scoring system. It makes it virtually impossible for people at home to understand what a good score is. One skater gets 152, another 172—is that a big difference? An insurmountable difference? What’s a perfect score? Is perfection even possible? I miss the days of the standard 6.0s. And I miss when judges weren’t using a 400-percent zoom on a skate to determine whether a jump was a good. It just doesn’t seem much in the spirit of the Olympics. What’s next? Penalty flags when they don’t finish a rotation?
Did you ever read any Trixie Belden? They were my favorite mysteries as a kid, next to Nancy Drew.