I’m glad I wore my wrist braces today because I was heaving computer manuals and hefty economics book back and forth. The library has almost an entire bookcase (5 out of 6 shelves) devoted to computer manuals. I can understand their heft. But the economics books? Is someone really going to read Making the Most of your Money Now by Jane Bryant Quinn at 1242 pages, including index? Paul Krugman and Robert Reich have readable-sized books, but Thomas Piketty’s Capital is 685 pages. (By the way, I found a paint chip—palest of pinkish whites—in either Capital or Adam Tooze’s Crashed, 706 pages. A useful bookmark while reading chapters between painting.) I was a little sad to see that no one had grabbed any books over the weekend from 010.92 WILSON to 113 TEILHAR. This last book, by the way, is indeed Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s The Future of Man, complete with the Omega on the cover, as I remember it from 1964. Suddenly I stopped: exactly what subjects does the 000 series contain? Rather than calling this the junk pile, it is labeled “Generalia including computers.” The books in it cover UFOs, conspiracy theories, computer science, and more. One of my favorite titles appears here, Atlas of Cursed Places. But I was happy to see that extreme conservative viewpoints were well-represented, e.g. Death of a Nation by Dinesh D’Souza, and Adios America by Ann Coulter. Liberals were also represented, with Hillary Clinton’s What Happened? (two copies!) and Donna Brazile, Hacks. “Thoughtful” conservatives were also there, like David Brooks, Max Boot, George Will (who used to be considered extreme), and Jim Webb (also once considered extreme). Still, the ratio of books by Noam Chomsky to those by Ann Coulter is 12/4, though he’s lived a lot longer and has written many more books. The complete title of Coulter’s book is Adios America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole. It was gratifying to see two volumes of Tom Paine’s writings just a few books away. Milestones for today: Most embarrassing find was Jeffrey Toobin’s account of Patty Hearst’s kidnapping with the stickies we’d put in as we were reading it two years ago. Most interesting find was Counterculture Crossover by Rachel Israel, a book by someone who had grown up in the Love Israel Family that we donated to the library. Most gratifying discoveries were 3 books misshelved, including one really misplaced; two books with water (or coffee) damage; and one book with the classification sticker misspelled. It doesn’t take much to make shelf readers happy.
rosalie howarth
1/20/2020 03:00:52 pm
I LOVE this blog, Becky! Can just hear your voice and resonate with the satisfaction of the job and familiar authors, etc. Jung was hip when I was in art school, and I went to the Love Israel sprawling house in N. Seattle as a young UW student. I shared a house with a Seik, friend from childhood. Life is rich. WIsh I had the tax subsidy stats on hand for your friend who was surprised we had a library. I think it says a lot about the San Juans, along with the total number of folks who marched in the first Women's March and how we didn't have a big enough Hall for the Dem. caucus a few years back. Comments are closed.
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Author Rebecca Moore is Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at San Diego State University. She is currently Reviews Editor for Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions and Co-Director of The Jonestown Institute. Archives
December 2021
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