Sleeping at the Starlite Motel by Bailey White

I was glad to have Bailey White by my side this past weekend. It was a pleasure to dip in and out of her second book of stories about her home and her people in Southern Georgia and its environs. 

Sleeping at the Starlite Motel and Other Adventures on the Way Back Home (1995) finds Ms. White traveling one July to the north to escape the 'green-ness' of the South in summer when even the humid air is tinged with the color and "anything that doesn't move sprouts a blanket of moss." In another episode she explores a cave and ponders that a death underground would be "gray and damp." She gathers with family members in Virginia to reunite ten Chippendale chairs for her nouveau riche cousin Mandon who wants to purchase the entire lot. She visits a one-room school house in Vermont. She and a fellow teacher ditch a series of boring computer classes and take in the dog races instead. She attends a wedding and spends the entire reception sitting on the sidelines in an effort to hide the purple sandals she wore, "because I had suddenly decided my feet looked big and strange."

Oh, yes, Ms. White is still very funny and spot on with her descriptions and characterizations. And although I found this series of vignettes to be a bit more wistful and bittersweet than her stories in Mama Makes Up Her Mind (that I wrote about here), I still want her to be my BFF. 

Stash from the Stacks

Vintage postcard featuring my lovely library in 1919

Here are the books I scored in today's trip to the library:

School of Fear by Gitty Daneshvari - In an effort to overcome their fears, four children enroll in the creepy school run by a slightly crazy ex-beauty queen, Mrs. Wellington. Madeline's fear of bugs has her wearing a beekeeper's netted hat and carrying cans of insect spray on her belt. Lulu has a fear of enclosed spaces and avoids elevators. Then there are the two boys: Theo is afraid of death (his own and any family member's), and Garrison fears large bodies of water. 

Each chapter opens with the definition of a different phobia. For example, did you know that logizomechaniophobia is the fear of computers?

The story was recommended to me by a fifth-grader and has adorable illustrations by Carrie Gifford.

Sleeping at the Starlite Motel and Other Adventures on the Way Back Home by Bailey White - More Southern delights from my new BFF and a perfect way to get in the mood for my upcoming Grand Southern Literary Tour 2013.

The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester - I mistook this book as a re-titling of Winchester's The Professor and the Madman which I read a couple of years ago and enjoyed. A commenter, Tullik, set me straight on this misconception, and in light of the recent explorations of my own stash of dictionaries (here and here),  I am really looking forward to digging in to this book about the famed OED.