30 Day Book Meme - Days 22 and 23

( Days 1-21 )

Day 22 – Favorite book you own - Picture me looking at my bookshelves and trying to figure out an answer to this one.  I've already discussed my beloved Anne of Green Gables collection, and since I don't really collect "rare" books, I'm going to go with the Applewood reissues of Nancy Drew.  I own 14 of them at last count, and I greatly enjoy them.  I like the whole concept of reprinting the books as they originally were, with the covers and advertisements and interior illustrations...and the now-outdated classist/racist/sexist attitudes within the books.  I think it's definitely acceptable to let people see that things have changed in the way things are done.  I love the art, in most cases.  And, I secretly LOVE the original Nancy.  She has moxie and independence, and gets to do stuff that the modern Nancy doesn't.  In the original Secret of Shadow Ranch, she gets to carry a pistol (which is sensible, since she's riding in the desert) and she gets to use it, whereas the Nancy of the Files and Super Mysteries doesn't even get to touch a weapon - it's in the series bible (despite the fact that the Hardy Boys get to fire machine guns).  Not to mention The Message in the Hollow Oak where she gets to use dynamite!  There's definitely classism, because Nancy knows that she's important, and not everyone is, but in a lot of ways, the original Nancy rocks.

Day 23 – A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven’t - My to-read pile is pretty big, so there are any number of answers to this one.  Some things stay on the shelf just because thye get preempted by other reading, or because their size makes digging into them a little intimidating.  One of these books is Equal: Women Reshape American law by Fred Streiburg.  I probably will get to it while I am in the class I'm taking, because it may be useful.  Those of you who know me know that this is a subject I am passionate on, being a woman and the mother of a daughter, but the book is about the size of The Bear and the Dragon, or other Clancy books of the way-overwritten era.  So it's not been on the top of my list.
 

( Days 24-30 )