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January 22, 2003
Books, Book, Books
I've never been able to keep track of all my books. Being an autodidact is a horrible thing, dissonance-wise, but I can always be counted on for a uniquely twisted perspective. I found a box in the south 40 of the garage called 'good books' and it occured to me to go through them and swap some out of the bookcase that I'm sick of looking at.
The great find was Gwaltney's Drylongso, which I've been talking about only recently. I got rid of Gleik's FSTR which was a tremendous bore. I still have a shelf full of my black intellectuals, and recent events make me feel like I should have them, but I know I'm not going to read any Gerald Early soon, nor Ellis Cose, nor bell hooks, nor Gina Dent. I'm keeping the black autobiography on hand to reference my new black republican brothers. Marcus Mabry will make an interesting re-read in that context, despite the fact that I so much more admire Brent Staples. We haven't heard from Brent have we? What a great blogger he'd be.
I tossed half of my Amis fiction. I kept Julian Barnes. I buried Marquez and Bellow's Revelstien as well as Mailer's Harlot's Ghost. I kept my thin volumes of Charles Johnson and T. Boyle. I got rid of all of the Ishmael Reed except for Airing Dirty Laundry and Japanese by Spring. I put my Clancy on the bottom shelf. As much as I enjoyed and admired the principals of Every Man a Tiger, I'm war weary and we haven't even started yet. I suspect, however I will want to talk about sortie planning sometime this spring.
Silicon Snake Oil by Cliff Stoll. Hey, now there's a keeper. If I'd have read that twice instead of Po Bronson once, I'd be a wealthier man now. Also for the garage are The New New Thing and Good to Great, even though the latter is an excellent book. I got Plural But Equal to go next to Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. I also rearranged a shelf so that Lani Guinier is next to Political Numeracy and Information Systems & Democratic Processes. I'll be dusting those off soon enough.
I can't find any of my McPhees. Only the Curve of Binding Energy. So I stuck that next to Jonathan Schell's Fate of the Earth, and Einstein's Monsters. Right next to that on the pessimism shelf is Johnson's Intellectuals, Harold Bloom and E.D. Hirsch. Which reminds me, where is my Robert Nozick?
The top shelf is still the same, and I didn't realize that I had Cecil Adams right next to Stanley Crouch. That's funny, to me. Hey, now there's an idea. I think I have enough room to make a full O'Reilly shelf, especially since I'm not working...
Posted by mbowen at January 22, 2003 10:04 PM
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Tracked on March 22, 2005 03:48 PM