GOING RETRO

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

Yesterday I found myself an hour away from home in a quaint, small town complete with a main street library that looked like it once may have been a barbecue restaurant with dark-stained wood siding on the exterior. I stepped inside hoping to research a new idea for a novel about a mystery involving small town teenagers.

Librarians have always proved to be helpful and these ladies were no different. One librarian escorted me to the Youth section, which contained hundreds of books in both fiction and nonfiction. When I asked what the most popular teenage books were being read beyond the Twilight and Harry Potter series, she frowned. “We usually lose them around this age.” I asked why and she shrugged. Actually, that proved to be an interesting mystery in itself.

Remembering my own teenage days, I spent a lot of time at the library and though teens were in the library, they were in front of a computer the entire four hours I was there.

I do admit I read more during the times I was without a real boyfriend. You know, the times in between when someone asked me out, to go steady, and when we broke up. I always read more when I wasn’t what the kids today would call “in a relationship.” The summer between middle school and high school I read Gone With the Wind. Every fall I read Catcher in the Rye. I counted it as a back-to-school/birthday gift to myself. I still do and continue to find joy in the way J. D. Salinger wove words together to create a perfectly tangled fabric branded as teen angst between the covers.

“Kids are forced to read so much during school that they rebel against reading in general,” my teenage friend told me in confidence. That made me sad. Being a teenager also meant (at least to me) an interrupted time without responsibilities—a sort of Twilight Zone where I could actually zone out and become the characters I read about. Maybe it’s the after-school curriculum and sports and jobs that relinquish a teen’s ability to just chill with a book.

One cool thing in the library was a card catalog. I haven’t even seen one in years, so this was like finding a treasure from the past. The librarians used the Dewey-decimal system, but everything was computerized, too.

They did still stamp the books to show when they were last checked out, though, and that proved very helpful in seeing what was popular. Many award-winning books were checked out fewer times than those on the best seller list. That’s important to know, too.

Guess what was still one of the most popular? Nancy Drew. Go figure. I guess that means mystery is still in. Of course, it’s not as popular as the vampires, wizards or werewolves. In case you didn’t know, teens in this particular town seemed very interested in the mystery writing of Wendy Corsi Staub, who writes about a teenage psychic and Lily Dale Assembly in New York, an entire town full of psychics.

When I was a teenager, I read a lot of Edgar Allen Poe, Salinger and Mickey Spillane. I guess I was rebelling against something, but the funny thing is I haven’t grown out of it just yet. I’m still reading them and loving them and happy we live in a place where libraries and book stores still exist.