Adult Summer Reading Challenge 2023

Spring is not yet over, but this one for summer is already posted, since it begins on May 1. This is at Beyond the Bookends.

1. Book Set at the Beach: Summer on the Bluffs--Sunny Hostin
2. Boat Book: Love, Lists & Fancy Ships--Sarah Grunder Ruiz
3. Detective Book: Death of a Blueberry Tart--Lee Hollis
4. Book by a Jewish Author: The Jew in the Lotus--Rodger Kamenetz
5. Book Set in the 70s: Burn Baby Burn--Meg Medina
6. Jewelry Book: The Clue in Blue--Betsy Allen
7. Celebrity Book Club Pick: What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day--Pearl Cleage
8. Full-Cast Audiobook: The Path Made Clear--Oprah Winfrey
9. Elderly Main Character: Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk--Kathleen Rooney
10. Domestic Thriller: The Lies I Tell--Julie Clark
11. YA Historical Fiction: The Black Kids--Christina Hammonds Reed
12. Book About Art or Artists: The Da Vinci Code--Dan Brown
13. Middle-Grade Fantasy: Changeling--Molly Harper
14. Family Drama (or family saga): The Long Winter--Laura Ingalls Wilder [re-read]
15. Ultimate Beach Reads 2023: Maame--Jessica George
16. Greek Mythology Retelling: Oh My Gods!--Stephanie Cooke
17. Book Set in Italy: The Villa--Rachel Hawkins
18. College Romance: The Deal--Elle Kennedy
19. 2023 New Release: Once More With Feeling--Elissa Sussman
20. Minimalism, Organizing, or Cleaning Book: The Minimalist Home--Joshua Becker
21. Book about Going on Vacation (or hotel books): The Hotel Nantucket--Elin Hilderbrand
22. Book about Poverty and its Impact: Maid--Stephanie Land
23. Historical Fiction Book about Books: The Personal Librarian--Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray
24. Feel-Good Read: 1022 Evergreen Place--Debbie Macomber
25. Free Space: Big Summer--Jennifer Weiner

Challenge completed on August 19

One Week to Go

 

One week left in April. One week left of blogging alphabet soups, and plenty more surprise to come. I'm still revising my upcoming posts. When the month is over, there will be reflections posts and the post A to Z road trip, a chance to visit and revisit some participants' blogs. 

It's been fun so far. Still can't believe it's nearing the end. I'm already wondering what I'll be blogging about when the month is over. I know. 

TUNE in tomorrow for more memories. 

S for...

STICKERS:

I'm sure many of you had a collection of stickers, and an album to keep them in. I'm pretty sure I had one of the albums pictured above. Although there were times when I stuck them on things like binders and lunchboxes. 

Things I loved collecting stickers of were cats, unicorns, rainbows and bears. I also liked the scratch-and-sniff ones. I had both paper and puffy stickers. I had many stickers similar to these:

There was also this sticker line, which I also had. I bet a lot of you remember Wacky Packages.

Whenever I saw racks like these, I felt like a kid in a candy store.

SNOOPY:

A character I'm pretty sure I had among my stickers was Snoopy. I certainly liked Snoopy and Peanuts gang a lot. I had the comic collection Peanuts Jubilee, which I wore out from reading excessively!

I always loved reading the strip in the Sunday comics inserts. I was upset to learn that the Peanuts holiday specials would no longer be shown on ABC. For the last two years, I'd been borrowing the Peanuts Halloween DVD from my library. I have yet to see the Peanuts movie from 2015, however. 

My senior year of high school we put on the play Snoopy. It was similar to the one seen in this video:

SMURFS:

I really loved watching them on Saturday mornings. I had some of the figurines and some plush toys. Not such what other merchandise I had, but suffice it to say they were one of my favorite characters.

SEA WEES:

Before Ariel, this was the toy for mermaid lovers. A lot of people I know don't seem to know about these. One person, though, said she had all of them. Originally there were just three mermaids all of whom were reissued a year or two later with matching baby mermaids. Some came with sea pets, animals that were half-fish and half another animal, like a seal, penguin, pelican, and even a cat and a dog. There was a tropical-themed line and an icy-themed one. Click to see more.

I only ever got one of these, the pink-finned one when she came with the baby.

SHRINKY DINKS:

Who had this one? You colored little pieces of plastic and baked them in the oven and they shrank. This was another toy made by Colorfoms.

STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE:

I had several of the dolls and stuffed animals, card and board games, and miniatures, and I don't know what else. I did however, grow out of toys once Kenner's original line ended, so I missed a lot of the later items. But I do think the originals are better than the new ones.

I had everything in this picture, except Huckleberry Pie and the Purple Pieman, and I had Orange Blossom when she was reissued with her pet butterfly:

I ad some of the miniatures, not sure which ones, or if I had any other tase in this picture:

As I said, the new designs just don't compare to the originals.

SUNSHINE FAMILY:

Still another favorite childhood toy. A craft-themed, environmental-focused line with booklets containing ideas of things to make. A "hippie" alternative to Barbie (though there was play set where Barbie babysits for the family). Grandparents and pets were available, as well the Happy Family (the African American counterpart to the Sunshine Family), and numerous play sets, including  a house, craft store, and bicycles.

SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK:

The 50th anniversary was celebrated this year with a sing-along. 

Those who grew up in the 70s and 80s will remember these interstitial animated shorts that aired between cartoons on Saturday mornings on ABC. These there--minute shows taught kids multiplication, grammar, history and science. A short-lived computer series came later, as did a series on money. An Earth Rock series was introduced in 2009 on DVD.

I still enjoy reliving these shorts on Youtube.

Here are some of many ones produced. Do a Youtube search to find others.

SILLY PUTTY:

Endless fun could be had by using Silly Putty to copy images from newspapers and stretching out and distorting the images it picked up. Click here to see some fun facts about Silly Putty.

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SIGNING off for today. TUNE in again on Monday.

R for...

RAINBOWS:  

I am of a time when kids could wear stuff like this without fearing a consequence like this. I thought about this after reading that article. No social media then, and from what I could see, not many people were of aware of the pride flag at that time, even though it has been around since the late 1970s. I had at least one rainbow shirt, as did many other kids at the time, and not one remark against it was made.

I also collected things with rainbows, like notebooks and stickers (more on stickers tomorrow) without any consequences. I never had the rainbow flip flops, as far I can recall. I did have a rainbow plush wall hanging, kind of like the one below.

And most will remember Rainbow Brite, though that was another toy that came out when I outgrew toys. And the current Rainbow High line.

RAMONA BOOKS:

After Judy Blume, another childhood favorite author was Beverly Cleary. I read her Ramona book series the most . It was spun off an earlier series by Cleary, Henry Huggins. Ramona proved even more popular. The last book in the series was published in 1999. Before then, a Canadian TV series had been made, with Sarah Polley as Ramona (Yes, that Sarah Polley). In 2010, came the film Ramona and Beezus, largely on the last two books in the series, Ramona Forever and Ramona's World.

One moment in Ramona the Pest (the second book in the series) that has stuck in my mind is when her kindergarten teacher tells her to "Sit here for the present." Ramona not surprisingly misunderstands what that means and refuses to budge from her seat and until the teacher finally questions why and Ramona asks why she hasn't gotten a present. She feels cheated when she learns "for the present" means "for now." And she's late for school one day when her mom tells her to leave at "quarter after 8," thinking it means 8:25, since a quarter is 25 cents.

RUBIK'S CUBE:

A 3-D combination puzzle developed by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik, Rubik's Cube took the world by storm. People struggled to solve the cube, but many could ones solve one or two of the sides. It was typical to see a cube mixed up like this:

I never got the actual Cube, and wasn't all that eager to have one. However,  Chex Cereal got in on the craze with a mail-in offer for a Chex and Fruit Cube and I could not resist sending away for it. It too, was hard to solve. One side had Chex Cereal bits (with the Chex logo in the center square) and different fruits on the other sides.

Rubik's Cube inspired a Saturday morning cartoon, with Ron Palillo (formerly of Welcome Back, Kotter) as the voice of the cube. And there was this rather awful costume. I'd prefer this more realistic one, even if it might be hard to move around in.

None of Rubik's other inventions proved as popular as the cube. 

RECORD STORES:

Kids today don't know the fun of looking around for the newest music and posters and other music-related items in record store. Displays and scenes typically looked like this:

Now that vinyl is making a comeback, displays like this have emerged in stores such as Barnes and Noble and Target. So at least some people today can see what flipping trough these displays was like in the days of yore. Though it doesn't compare to actual record stores.

I was more of a cassette person, but I did get them at these stores whenever I could get to one. I always had to go out of town to find a record store. If I could get them at drugstores in town, I would do so. When I transitioned to CDs, Kmart had already been in my town a year, so that was where I got most of my first CDs.

ROMPERS:

Anyone remember wearing one of these? I now I had some that I wore over the summer. Some were made of terrycloth. No doubt they were very comfortable. I certainly would like to have one now. The closest things today are these.

ROLLING STONE:

It's been years since I have read this magazine, but I subscribed throughout the 1980s. I wanted to get it after seeing it a family friend's house. They had been subscribing to RS since it began in 1967. I still have most of the ones I got then, packed in plastic storage tubs in the garage. How much could they be worth now? The previously shown Live Aid from 1985 cover is among those I have. I am missing the Mark Knopfler cover also from 1985, because I let my mom's friend have it as she really likes Dire Straits.

Though I rarely read it now, the cover and design are much smaller and just don't compare to those of the old days. I certainly would not have wanted to keep the issue that had Trump on the cover!

I felt like the only one my age who got this magazine. Others called it a bunch of crap. They seemingly knew nothing and were believing the crap they read in The National Enquirer. This was before the Internet, of course.

RERUNS IN SUMMER:

When TV shows went on hiatus for the summer, reruns of the previous season would appear during the summer. It was a chance to see an episode you really liked again, or one you may have missed the first time around. Or if you could stay away from the TV, do something else. Some parents probably tried to persuade their children to do that by saying, "You already saw that episode."

RICK RACK:

This seemed to be everywhere when I grew up. But now it seems rare.

I had this  on many hand-made clothes.

RADIO: 

If you did not have a tape that contained a current song you liked, you had to wait to hear the song on the radio and record it on a blank tape. But doing so was much like the scenarios in these pictures:

And I rarely listen to the radio these days. Not into the satellite radio stations and the classic rock station I listened to for so many years is now less about the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, etc, and more about Alice in Chains, Nirvana, and Collective Soul. And songs not likely to be played on the radio anymore now get played at grocery stores. 

RAGGEDY ANN:

Other than the dolls, I'm not sure what merchandise I had from this beloved character.  I could not have imagined my childhood without at least the dolls.

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RIGHT now I have to go. SEE more tomorrow.

Q for...

QUARTERS:

When trying to come up with stuff for Q, one of the first things that came to mind was quarters. Those who went to play games on machines always needed quarters. People often binged on these games, thus running out of quarters. (More on video games to come.)

Originally it coast a dime to use pay phones, but eventually the price was raised to a quarter. Even before then, there was a slot for quarters on the phones. When my mom and I drove up to visit my aunt in Idaho in the 1980s, we stopped at a motel in Nevada. It cost two dollars to make to call on a payphone--eight quarters. And jukeboxes suffered the dime-to-quarter inflation as well. Pay phones are largely forgotten of course, because of cell phones, but some jukeboxes remain with digital music. I've never bothered trying to use these, but I'm sure they are more than just a quarter. And the standing video games can be still found at pizza places. No doubt they're more than a quarter now, too.

QUIK:

You may know this now as Nesquik, but back in the day it was Quik, or Nestle Quik. Before the name change, the packages looked like this:

The lid was a pain to get off, often needing a rounded knife.

The animated bunny appeared in the commercials:

Q-TIPS:

I still use these, even they aren't  the Q-Tips brand. Q-Tip is a trademarked term that many have mistaken for being a generic name. The same is true of names such as Kleenex (tissue) and Rollerblades (in-line skates), as well as with drug names like Prozac (the generic name is fluoxetine). But it's true that most people don't know, let alone care, about these details.  

Many will remember the slogan used by Q-Tips:

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QUITTING time for now. More RETRO stuff on Friday.

P for...

POSTERS:

Many people had a poster or more of some sort on their bedroom walls, whether it was of bands/musicians, movies and TV or movie stars or something random. Most stores would display posters like this. One would flip through the display on top and then try to locate the poster they wanted, rolled up in the bin below. We could also order posters from our monthly book order forms.

A poster that I had was one I found in a mall store called International Imports. I really liked this poster, it was so funny! I was disappointed not to see Elton John or the Eagles punned, however. And no ZZ Top (not really a fan, but still...) I only wonder what happened to it! (Click here to see a larger image.)

Now people seem to be making posters out of album covers from different decades, like these for sale on Etsy.

PHONES:

As someone who grew up in the 1980s, I was around when phones looked like this:

And when we were away from home, we to rely on these things. I can remember when it cost a dime, and then when it was raised to a quarter. 

And before the cellphone:

I was not a big phone user, as I was more of a loner who didn't socialize very much. As such I did not ask for my now private phone line, and I likely could not have afforded it. If anyone needed or wanted to call me for whatever reason, I would use our house phone.

It wouldn't be long before my house had a cordless phone, with an answering machine, in the 1990s. One of the first we had was something like this:

Looking through the phonebook was one thing I did when bored. I remember the perpetual calendar in the back of the book where you could look up a date in the past or future.

And, of course we all know what happened in the 2000s and beyond. Our house still has a landline, though, along with our individual cell phones. The home phone may be on its way out our house though....

PHOTOS:

Having to buy film for the camera, struggling to find something to take a picture of to use the last few exposures on the roll, and dropping the film roll off at the photo-developing lab at the nearest drugstore. And taking them home a week or two later in an envelope, with the negatives, enclosed in a larger envelope. There was also a time when we needed the things below, in darkened areas. If the cubes didn't work or you forgot to put one on, the picture would not turn out.

Not having to buy film and take it to be developed is the only advantage I have seen to taking pictures digitally. But there are times when I miss a printed photo. ...

PINS:

Something that seemed to be everywhere were some sort of pins worn on one's clothing. Music, and TV star pins were especially popular. Some pins came from the stores, some were homemade.

Many people would have pins on their jackets, like this:

There were pins (and other items, like pencils, cups and keychains) with people's names on them. I did not like this idea because I almost never found my name on these things. If you were one of the ubiquitous Jennifers, Michelles, Elizabeth, Lisa to Karens, you had no problem, unless you had an unusual spelling. I know someone who spells it Jennefer. 

PAPER DOLLS:

I had some of these, both store-bought and homemade. Some from cutting pictures from magazines and newspapers or making my own out of construction paper. Some were included in coloring books. It was always fun making the clothes with tabs.  I would even make my own clothes for the pre-made paper dolls.

I once had a toy called Dolly Pops, which were like a three-dimensional paper dolls. They came with plastic pop-on outfits and accessories.

PLAYGROUND:

Having played on a playground many times as a child, things like these never seemed to occur to me until now:

I don't know how I did it all then. I guess it as all about the fun. Though I'm sure some kids did get hurt once in a while. But we are still here today. We were obviously tough. And I don't think there were very many of the plastic-tunnel slides where I lived.

But if we weren't playing on the equipment, we would be playing hide-and-seek or hopscotch, jumping rope, or playing ball.

PLAY DOH:

Almost everyone played with Play Dough at some point. One of the play sets I had was the Fuzzy Pumper Barber Shop.

And something I did not know until now: Play Doh was an accidental invention.

PUZZLES:

Almost everyone put together a puzzle once in a while. The number of days it took to complete varied for everyone.

 

And crossword puzzles. I like doing the ones in TV Guide.

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PLEASED to have you come by today. See what's QUEUED up for tomorrow.