Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Bookworms and Margaret Weis

I was thinking about this the other night and even looked it up in the dictionary. Odd that the schools I went to should take a generic term for a myriad of worms and larvae that eat paper and/or bookshelves, but they do.

As a fan of books and reading and the whole experience surrounding the image of ‘curling up with a good book,’ you’d think I’d hate the little buggers. But I don’t.

Whenever I look at the word, I think of the cartoon figure I saw a lot in elementary school. A green segmented worm (is segmented the right term? Makes it sounds like it was chopped up) with round, black-rimmed glasses, and occasionally a hat, sometimes a graduation cap.

It’s a happy little image that said reading is fun, and I agreed wholeheartedly. I was ambivalent about worms in general, but somehow I came to like the idea of a bookworm. Which is odd, considering that even then I knew bookworms ate the pages of the stories I liked to read, but still…

A few years a go I bought a book in the DragonLance series, an anthology called the second Generation. There were two little holes on the side and as I flipped through it, the tiny holes became bigger and changed into tunnels running back and forth along that edge of the text. Clearly it was a victim of at least one bookworm, I thought. Although, other than the holes and whatnot, there was no sign of a living worm.

I bought the book.

I figured that not enough of the text was eaten up to make it impossible to read, and I was drawn to this idea of having that book.

Perhaps it’s just one of those quirks. But despite my little moment of anxiety the other night, where I worried there was still a worm and it was spreading to my other books (I was getting ready for bed and stopped to check), but that concern aside, I just liked the idea of having a book the illustrated the effect of these insects I’d heard about, but never saw. (And I keep losing my train of thought because of distractions, so I don’t even know if that’s what I originally planned to say. Alas.)

Also, Margaret Weis, who edited that anthology, is coming around to the various libraries this week. Yesterday she was at Mililani, tomorrow she’ll be at Kapolei at 6:30.

For those on Oahu, she’ll also be giving talks at:
Wahiawa, tonight, Tuesday, Feb 13 at 6 p.m.
Salt Lake/Moanalua, Thursday, Feb 15 at 3 p.m.
McCully-Moiliili, Thursday, Feb 15 at 5:30 p.m.


Also, an update:
Sundays' progress--15 pages read and briefly edited.
Total pages read and edited--20.
Monday, Feb 12, 2007--46 pages read and edited.
Total--66

Considering I was stuck on page 4 for days, it felt good to get something done.

2 comments:

writtenwyrdd said...

You wouldn't like the little so and sos if they'd eaten about fifty hardback books and nibbled on at least a couple of hundred paperbacks.

And segmented is the correct term, to my knowledge.

Sabrina Favors said...

Yeah, I'm sure I wouldn't. Which also makes me wonder why schools use the image of a bookworm to encourage children to read. "Here's a bookworm with glasses, boys and girls, now read or he'll eat every book you own and it'll be all your fault!" ~evil villain laughter~ Doesn't strike me as that effective.