Crocodiles Smile When They Dance

I felt myself vibrating a little, some biological tuning fork struck and left to ring and shiver. A sense of agitation. A sense of standing just outside myself, just a pace or two, just enough to feel the world suddenly skewed, tilted, tipped to a new polarity.

I licked my lips. My fingers were nervous, dancing and flipping and tapping out rhythms, ten little Fred Astaires on ten invisible little chairs. Excessive blinking. Dry throat. Dreams of crocodiles, chasing crocodiles, yes, always chasing, always chasing and smiling.

I read the label on a cereal box and it made me over-excited. Trisodium Phosphate! Yes!

My thoughts tumbled. They were clouds blown apart by the wind and scattered across the sky. Little ships lost in a vast blue sea. An arid sea.

Thirsty. Oh yes, thirsty. That terrible need.

You see, it had been over a day since I last read a book.

It all happened innocently, of course. I finished one book and didn’t have time to pick out another book right then. And the next morning was busy, too, and the next afternoon. And what happened then? Things got a little twitchy.

Fred Astaire fingers. Crocodile dreams.

And yet wasn’t this a little odd? These reactions to booklessness? It wasn’t even that I didn’t have books. I had twenty thousand. But I hadn’t started reading one yet. Worse, I hadn’t even picked one out.

The world, three degrees off kilter and tilting quickly.

But what was this? It seemed almost like these were symptoms of withdrawal. Which was silly. Right?

Let’s see…

Withdrawal Symptoms (via About.com)

Mild to moderate psychological symptoms:
• Feeling of jumpiness or nervousness
• Feeling of shakiness
• Anxiety
• Irritability or easily excited
• Emotional volatility, rapid emotional changes
• Depression
• Fatigue
• Difficulty with thinking clearly
• Bad dreams

Okay, yeah. This is moderately spooky. So basically I’m addicted to books. I needed a book. Right away.

Let’s go a little further…

Mild to moderate physical symptoms:
• Headache – Okay, yeah. Headache was there. I mean, there was no book!
• Sweating, especially the palms of the hands or the face – Well, I always sweat. I admit it. How to measure the changing volume capacity of Niagara Falls…? Beyond my ability.
• Nausea – I did read Sartre once.
• Vomiting – Luckily, no. But I did find a book fairly soon. Who knows if I hadn’t?
• Loss of appetite – Hungry for words and words alone.
• Insomnia, sleeping difficulty – Around the crocodile dreams, yes, sleep was tricky.
• Paleness – Well, I’m Irish. It’s hard to tell.
• Rapid heart rate (palpitations) – I was getting there.
• Eyes, pupils different size (enlarged, dilated pupils) – I try not to look in the mirror too much. It never says I’m the fairest one of all.
• Skin, clammy – I’ll check next time.
• Abnormal movements – Sort of a book version of the I-have-to-pee dance.
• Tremor of the hands – Fred Astaire fingers.
• Involuntary, abnormal movements of the eyelids – Blinking. Maybe there will be words there when my eyes open…

There are severe symptoms, too, but it was a short withdrawal period. No hallucinations. Unless the crocodiles count.

So… this is strange and a little troubling. I mean, if I’m addicted to something I’m glad it’s books. But what do you think, Fellow Sophisticates? Book addiction is healthy? Book addiction has some downsides? Check yourself into a hospital immediately, Ink?

And what about YOU? Book addicts, anyone?

Here’s a checklist to help you out (slightly modified from the one by the helpful folks at Helpguide.org):

Common signs and symptoms of book abuse
• You’re neglecting your responsibilities at school, work, or home (e.g. flunking classes, skipping work, neglecting your children) because of your book use.
• You’re using books under dangerous conditions or taking risks while reading, such as driving while reading, using dirty bookmarks, or having unprotected Kindles in the bathtub.
• Your book use is getting you into legal trouble, such as arrests for disorderly conduct, driving under the influence of audiobooks, or stealing to support a book habit.
• Your book use is causing problems in your relationships, such as fights with your partner or family members, an unhappy boss, or the loss of old friends.

Common signs and symptoms of drug addiction
• You’ve built up a book tolerance. You need to use more books to experience the same effects you used to get with smaller amounts.
• You read books to avoid or relieve withdrawal symptoms. If you go too long without books, you experience symptoms such as nausea, restlessness, insomnia, depression, sweating, shaking, and anxiety.
• You’ve lost control over your book use. You often read books or read more than you planned, even though you told yourself you wouldn’t. You may want to stop reading, but you feel powerless.
• Your life revolves around book use. You spend a lot of time using and thinking about books, figuring out how to get them, and recovering from the book’s effects.
• You’ve abandoned activities you used to enjoy, such as hobbies, sports, and socializing, because of your book use.
• You continue to read books, despite knowing it’s hurting you (or your pocketbook). It’s causing major problems in your life—blackouts, viruses, mood swings, depression, paranoia—but you read anyway.

Support group, anyone?

I Missed the YA Train

Yup, this post is about the HOTTEST THING IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW OMG YA LITERATURE. And also about how I'm totally oblivious about it. Yes! Shocking, I know.

This is strange, in a way. I'm an eclectic and omnivoracious reader. I read a bit of everything. There are three basic exceptions.

1) Romance (though I once read a Harlequin novel out of curiosity! Luckily it takes only 45 minutes!)

2) Westerns (though I like western movies and always think I should read some westerns and plan on it and never do. I have read some literary novels that are sort of westerns, like Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy, but that's really more Cormac McCarthyish than westernish).

3) YA

Yes, I am mostly unread in YA. How did this turn of events come about? I posit three possibly overlapping theories.

1) I am really pretty lame.

2) I simply missed the train. Or maybe I didn't even realize there was a train and merely stole a pickup truck and let out a YEEHAW! and tore off down the street. I think this is pretty likely. I started reading seriously in grade three when my Mom (happy Mother's Day!) forced me to read The Hobbit. LOTR followed, of course. I read a few Hardy Boys. Then Watership Down and the Duncton Wood series (and those mole books are certainly adult, what with the sex, death, and genocides of the faith). And I've read the Prydain Chronicles and the Harry Potter books, both of which sort of start out as middle grade and evolve into YA (in my completely uninformed opinion). The Prydain Chronicles I read when young (Harry Potter as an adult, perhaps my lone adult step back into the YA realm), but after that I simply read adult fantasy, sci-fi, crime, and then classics and literary novels, and then history, science, memoirs, etc. So from about grade five onward I was reading adult books.

I'm not sure I even comprehended the fact that there was a section such as YA. It was beyond the pale (or at least my interest). My parents trusted that I could handle the older stuff. But this leaves me with a sort of experiential gap.

3) My third theory has more to do with my adult self. I could go back and read YA now... and yet I'm not really drawn to, no matter how great some books are supposed to be. Why? My theory has to do with the nature of the stories, the idea that they're often (so I randomly guess!) of the bildungsroman sort. Young people and young people's issues. But I'm not a young person. I'm in my early thirties, and have kids of my own. These kids are young, though, and so I can't really engage these YA issues through them yet (in a decade, perhaps?). They make me curious, naturally enough, about stuff to do with kids. Kids literature and point of view, stories about kids. But not really the teen/YA sort of thing. And for myself, I'm just not engaged in these issues. They're long past for me, nor do I feel I have any real unresolved issues stemming from that period. If I were consciously or subconsciously working over such issues, I'm guessing I might be drawn back into such stories. So, for me, I just feel I'm not engaged right now in the sort of character dynamics that drive the YA novels.

Yet obviously I don't know what I'm talking about! Because YA is hot hot hot right now (Thank you, Harry Twilight and the Philosopher's Eclipse)! And a fair bit of this is driven by adult readers. Sparkly Loving Moms! Dumbledorf Dreaming Dads!

So as a writer and bookseller I'm curious. What draws you to YA literature? As a reader? As a writer? There is great writing there, obviously, as there is in all types of literature. Is that it? You'll look for a good story wherever? Or is there something more, something about the nature of YA itself that draws you in? And what the hell is YA anyway? I read and liked Catcher in the Rye, and yet I have the feeling that if this were publisned now it would not be in the literature section, but rather in the YA section. How has YA changed, and why has it changed? Curious to see what you all think! Lay out my lameness, if you will.