Well, hello again, UOPTA readers! It’s so nice to be back, I feel kind of like a recurring guest star on a sitcom. Everybody applaud as I walk through the door, okay? Thanks. A lot has happened since my last stint as Peter’s guest booger. I mean, there’s the Gonzales scandal, the Senator Craig scandal, the Britney scandal…we have many important current events to discuss. But instead I am going to talk about me.
Since last I blogged, I have starting teaching a course at Santa Monica College. The course is English 21A, and it’s for students who didn’t test into transfer level English, AKA students with pretty disappointing writing skills. Someday, I would love to teach a course on the complete works of Jane Austen (I’ll talk more about her later), but for now I get to educate the masses about the proper use of the semicolon and the difference between its and it’s.
I assign a 500-700 word essay about every other week. The most recent topic is “Describe a place that has significance to you and explain why it is significant.” Straightforward enough, right? Apparently not. All three of my immigrant students wrote about why their home country is better than the US, and home city is better than LA. I understand why an immigrant’s homeland would be significant to him, but the assignment was not "tell me how many shopping malls you have in your home city and explain why that makes your city better than LA." I got essays that contained ridiculous amounts of detail—“the table is 6 feet long by 3.5 feet wide” – but no real description. I got papers with LOTS of description, but no explanation of significance. After reading this rather disappointing crop, I had to ask myself if my assignment was as easy as I thought it was. Could I do it?
A Dingy, Poorly Lit Place
Since last I blogged, I have starting teaching a course at Santa Monica College. The course is English 21A, and it’s for students who didn’t test into transfer level English, AKA students with pretty disappointing writing skills. Someday, I would love to teach a course on the complete works of Jane Austen (I’ll talk more about her later), but for now I get to educate the masses about the proper use of the semicolon and the difference between its and it’s.
I assign a 500-700 word essay about every other week. The most recent topic is “Describe a place that has significance to you and explain why it is significant.” Straightforward enough, right? Apparently not. All three of my immigrant students wrote about why their home country is better than the US, and home city is better than LA. I understand why an immigrant’s homeland would be significant to him, but the assignment was not "tell me how many shopping malls you have in your home city and explain why that makes your city better than LA." I got essays that contained ridiculous amounts of detail—“the table is 6 feet long by 3.5 feet wide” – but no real description. I got papers with LOTS of description, but no explanation of significance. After reading this rather disappointing crop, I had to ask myself if my assignment was as easy as I thought it was. Could I do it?
A Dingy, Poorly Lit Place
by Stacy Redd
New York City has no shortage of bookstores. There’s the ubiquitous Barnes and Noble; the slightly less ubiquitous Borders; the king-of-all-used-bookstores, the Strand; and a ton of privately owned specialty bookstores littered throughout the city. But for my money, there’s no bookstore in all of New York more worth visiting than Three Lives and Company.
“Three Lives” is located in the West Village, close to NYU. I never learned its actual address, because it’s impossible to find anything in the West Village, unless you’re a real New Yorker, and I am not. Most of Manhattan is a wonderfully logical grid; 23rd street is north of 22nd, 9th avenue is west of 8th avenue. If you can count, you can find your way around.
However, everything below 14th street is a crazy free-for-all. Instead of consecutive numbers, you see names like Mulberry and Bleecker, avenues run east-west when they should run north-south, and streets intersect at all kinds of angles. I almost immediately gave up trying to find places in the Village using silly things like addresses, and resigned myself to wandering around until I happened upon the place I wanted to visit.
Luckily, the Village is a wonderful place to get lost. Every time I went there in search of Three Lives, I would stumble upon something wonderful: a street fair, a cool little coffee shop, a pet store with puppies in the window. Getting to Three Lives was half the fun.
Once I found the right street, the store itself was always to spot. It has bright red French doors, one of which is usually open. The new arrivals are prominently displayed in the big, shiny windows, but they’re not the same books you’d see in a Barnes and Noble window. Three Lives doesn’t sell books written by Danielle Steele or Tom Clancy; it sells 1,000 page biographies of Edith Wharton. This is why I love it.
Three Lives isn’t very big, but it’s not as small as it looks from the outside. The hardwood floor is old and uneven. It’s not terribly well-lit, but this really isn’t the kind of store that encourages sitting around.
The bookshelves that line the walls are the same wood as the floor, and it’s rare to find more than one copy of any book in stock. I wouldn’t come here in search of a particular book; it’s likely they wouldn’t have it. I come when I want to find something new to read. The books on display are almost always books I have never heard of and I’ve never seen more than 2 other people (not counting the employees) in the store at a time. More than once I’ve been the only customer there.
The cash register area is elevated, like a pharmacist’s desk, and the employees seem aloof, but are very friendly if you ask for help. You get the feeling that they’ve read every book in the store, they speak Russian, and really understand what’s happening in Darfur. These are the people I hope to someday become.
A huge Nick Hornby fan, I would describe Three Lives as the bookstore version of Championship Vinyl from High Fidelity. It’s small, inconvenient, expensive, and snooty, but if you’re looking for something great, you’re guaranteed to find it there.
New York City has no shortage of bookstores. There’s the ubiquitous Barnes and Noble; the slightly less ubiquitous Borders; the king-of-all-used-bookstores, the Strand; and a ton of privately owned specialty bookstores littered throughout the city. But for my money, there’s no bookstore in all of New York more worth visiting than Three Lives and Company.
“Three Lives” is located in the West Village, close to NYU. I never learned its actual address, because it’s impossible to find anything in the West Village, unless you’re a real New Yorker, and I am not. Most of Manhattan is a wonderfully logical grid; 23rd street is north of 22nd, 9th avenue is west of 8th avenue. If you can count, you can find your way around.
However, everything below 14th street is a crazy free-for-all. Instead of consecutive numbers, you see names like Mulberry and Bleecker, avenues run east-west when they should run north-south, and streets intersect at all kinds of angles. I almost immediately gave up trying to find places in the Village using silly things like addresses, and resigned myself to wandering around until I happened upon the place I wanted to visit.
Luckily, the Village is a wonderful place to get lost. Every time I went there in search of Three Lives, I would stumble upon something wonderful: a street fair, a cool little coffee shop, a pet store with puppies in the window. Getting to Three Lives was half the fun.
Once I found the right street, the store itself was always to spot. It has bright red French doors, one of which is usually open. The new arrivals are prominently displayed in the big, shiny windows, but they’re not the same books you’d see in a Barnes and Noble window. Three Lives doesn’t sell books written by Danielle Steele or Tom Clancy; it sells 1,000 page biographies of Edith Wharton. This is why I love it.
Three Lives isn’t very big, but it’s not as small as it looks from the outside. The hardwood floor is old and uneven. It’s not terribly well-lit, but this really isn’t the kind of store that encourages sitting around.
The bookshelves that line the walls are the same wood as the floor, and it’s rare to find more than one copy of any book in stock. I wouldn’t come here in search of a particular book; it’s likely they wouldn’t have it. I come when I want to find something new to read. The books on display are almost always books I have never heard of and I’ve never seen more than 2 other people (not counting the employees) in the store at a time. More than once I’ve been the only customer there.
The cash register area is elevated, like a pharmacist’s desk, and the employees seem aloof, but are very friendly if you ask for help. You get the feeling that they’ve read every book in the store, they speak Russian, and really understand what’s happening in Darfur. These are the people I hope to someday become.
A huge Nick Hornby fan, I would describe Three Lives as the bookstore version of Championship Vinyl from High Fidelity. It’s small, inconvenient, expensive, and snooty, but if you’re looking for something great, you’re guaranteed to find it there.
***********************************************************
Well that wasn’t so hard, was it? That took me about 20 minutes. I know you might argue that as the one teaching the course, of course I should be able to complete it easily. And you’re right. But so what? I still think they could have done better. Telling me that New Delhi is the capital of India and therefore the place where politicians go does not explain to me why you miss life there so much, nor does it help to me envision the city, unless it looks exactly like Washington, DC. And I have a feeling it does not.
On a slightly related note, when writing an email to friend who is planning to move to Austin, TX, I accidentally called “Real World Austin” “Real World Austen,” as in Jane. She wrote back that she would love to see what “Real World Austen” would be like, so I think I am going to write a piece about what happens when Austen heroines stop acting polite and start being real. If the thought of Elinor Dashwood, Emma Woodhouse, and Elizabeth Bennet together in the same estate is appealing to you, drop me a line (thessredd@gmail.com) and I’ll email it your way when it’s done.
UOPTA readers, it’s always a pleasure. My bro returns from Oso Grande today and will be back to blogging tomorrow morning. XOXO KIT.
Well that wasn’t so hard, was it? That took me about 20 minutes. I know you might argue that as the one teaching the course, of course I should be able to complete it easily. And you’re right. But so what? I still think they could have done better. Telling me that New Delhi is the capital of India and therefore the place where politicians go does not explain to me why you miss life there so much, nor does it help to me envision the city, unless it looks exactly like Washington, DC. And I have a feeling it does not.
On a slightly related note, when writing an email to friend who is planning to move to Austin, TX, I accidentally called “Real World Austin” “Real World Austen,” as in Jane. She wrote back that she would love to see what “Real World Austen” would be like, so I think I am going to write a piece about what happens when Austen heroines stop acting polite and start being real. If the thought of Elinor Dashwood, Emma Woodhouse, and Elizabeth Bennet together in the same estate is appealing to you, drop me a line (thessredd@gmail.com) and I’ll email it your way when it’s done.
UOPTA readers, it’s always a pleasure. My bro returns from Oso Grande today and will be back to blogging tomorrow morning. XOXO KIT.
4 comments:
Well done, faux daughter!
Sitting at my computer every weekday morning is significant to me. Why, you might ask?
Well, it is significant because it gives me an opportunity to smile and kvell (sp?) a bit. It is always a nice start to my workday trying to figure out how Peter's mind works. Thanks for pinch-hitting today.
Thanks not-mom!
nice job, I can see why you are Peter's friend. You touch on many spots close to my heart. As a former frequent traveler to NY, I also found the village to be a fascinating maze-an adventure in destination seeking that never disappointed. Also,my partner Tom is a prof at LACC and gives his classes, consisting of numerous immigrants, journals ,so as to get to know them better. The results,
can be quite entertaining, and often rarely have anything to do with the question asked. Lastly,(sorry Peter, I never wrote back this much to you)as a true book lover, the pure literary-ness of your blog was a pleasure to read. Kudos.
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