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Dear Baby, Cont'd.

How to check your tire pressure. Hmmm...I can show you how to pay someone to do this.

How to hang a framed photo. Well, here's a suggestion: Decorate with decals. You can find them cheap on Amazon. If the sticky piece is really long and convoluted, and everything gets twisted up, you can snip the sticky piece into several small, manageable fragments, and then your "canvas" becomes very arty.

How to choose an appropriate book in the library. This is a great skill.

In late August, you will find yourself swamped with anxiety--thoughts of coming school, or work, obligations. In my view, this is not a great time to "branch out." You want the literary version of comfort food. Ramona Quimby stories, British murder mysteries, Anne Tyler sagas. Save the experimentation for *early* summer.

A general question: Does a work of prose ever need to go on for more than three hundred pages? Be skeptical toward fat books, particularly fat books written by men. This is just how I feel.

You want to try to find your own life in the book you're reading--even if the ostensible subject is whaling, or cow-herding, or white-collar fraud--and here is a worthwhile tip. Reach for your weirdest, most-twisted, most-vexed relationship. That frenemy you can't stop thinking about. Every single work of literature is really about your relationship with that frenemy. When you think about your history with that frenemy, you can become Anna Karenina, Oliver Twist, Inspector Rebus. It's all there. Try it.

Still struggling? Make yourself an herbal tea.

This is all I know about the world.
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