Listmania

We like lists, right? The internet is the best place for lists, as we learn constantly here, here, and here. And that's not even getting into power rankings, which are one of the better things on the internet. And amazon, the place for books and internets, has a whole feature called Listmania. So. Do you guys want some lists? The problem I worry about is that maybe books aren't ridiculous enough for lists? Certainly not the ones on cracked. Maybe Mende-Siedlecki has some advice. If you're reading, Mende-Siedlecki, hit me with your best shot. Anyway, here is the inaugural list:

The Top Three Ways in Which I Have Made a Fool of Myself in Situations Involving Books and Girls

3.  Here is #3: When I was in ninth grade, at all boys' school in Buffalo, I went to the library here in Lockport to find books about quantum mechanics.  When I was in ninth and tenth grades, you should know, my buddy Hogan and I were obsessed with pop quantum mechanics for some reason.  While there, I overheard the librarian showing some girl the books on euthanasia.  Perfect situation to meet a girl, I thought, because I had never met any girls before.  "You know," I murmured to the girl, while looking straight ahead, "euthanasia is Greek, for, beautiful, , death."  I actually murmured that, and it actually had all those dumb commas' worth of pauses.  The girl looked about as horrified as she should've.  But I was not satisfied with etymology, and I decided to go in for the kill, with puns.  "I myself" (when I was in ninth grade, I said things like "I myself") "am for euthanasia, because without them soon there'd be no adults in Asia."

In retrospect, this sheds light on my antipathy for the nonfiction section, maybe.  Also, then I didn't talk to a girl for six years.

2.  Seven years after I was in ninth grade, two of my friends and I got drunk and one of them decided to make some barbecue pulled pork sandwiches.  So far, this story looks good, because drunk and sandwiches.  However, this story also involves my Penguin Classics Edition of the Ambassadors by Henry James.  My copy had a painting on it that had some people sitting by what I thought was a river.  Or a lake.  The girl whose boyfriend was in making sandwiches, for reasons I don't super remember or understand, claimed that it was in fact not a lake or a river, but a concrete fountain.  I disagreed; she took the book away and stood on it for a few minutes.  This is how people have fun where I went to school.  Now, I especially loved this copy of the Ambassadors, and pleaded for it back; the girl agreed to surrender it, but only if, should the water turn out to be in a fountain, I would buy her lunch.  I negotiated with this terrorist, and in the cruel light of the next morning, amid pulled pork sandwich detritus, that thing really did look like a fountain.  Dammit.  So, I had to pay for a lunch.  And I felt forever disgraced in front of that copy of the Ambassadors.  I still do, actually.

1.  But because I am a recidivist, I have not stopped embarrassing myself in new and interesting ways with books and girls.  This one gets top honors even though in this story, I am only embarrassed in front of myself and, now, the internet.  And but so.  I went to the bookstore the other day, and because I parked like a block away, I brought one of my books with me.  And then.  The cute girl in the bookstore said, "Could you leave that up here?  They kind of get paranoid."  So then was I sunk.  You all remember, I've no doubt, my earlier claim that I was not going to buy any more books until I had no more than a hundred left to read.  Well, I could hardly get my book I had been reading back, in front of that cute girl, without buying a book, too.  So, here that claim's mettle was tested, and boy, did it fail.  In fairness (to me) I did hover around the poetry section in the front, hoping that the cute girl would go on break or something before I had to collect my book in penury and retire in disgrace.  But she stayed put.  So I did what anyone who is morbidly concerned with what strangers think of them would do: I threw my policy on bookbuying to the wind, and picked up the Best American Essays 2008.  Secret shame, secret overshare.

So there we have it, our first list.  Although on review it is less of a list and more three barely related things that couldn't have been coddled into full posts on their own.  Least publishable unit, I guess.  But!  Have you guys sorted your embarrassments into things with books?  Have you any ideas for lists?  Let me know!  I don't pay for the ability for you people to comment to heat the whole neighborhood, you know.