Saturday, November 03, 2007
Book Notes
I went to the library today for the first time in a couple of years. It's not that I haven't been reading, just so you know; I get a steady supply of books from my parents' collection, all with amusing seventies cover art and aggressive underlining and margin notes. But I used to really enjoy going to the main branch of the public library -- where they had musical practice rooms and some interesting rare books in addition to a particularly pungent set of homeless people -- back when I still worked down in that area. Now it's about four el stops away from my job, though, so I'm stuck with the branch up here in Lakeview, which seems to view itself as more of a free version of Blockbuster. Seriously, there couldn't have been more than a couple thousand books in there, but there were two copies of "Maid in Manhattan." J. Lo is the new James Joyce, from what I'm told.
Anyway, I selected a copy of Les Miserables to continue my trend of reading things I'm embarrassed to not have read in high school. I'm a little terrified that people will think I'm reading it because I'm the only person in America still excited about the musical, but I'm willing to give it a shot. Maybe I'll wrap the cover in brown paper so people will just think I'm reading porn.
I also wanted to get Devil in the White City, finding myself to be still in a bit of a Halloween mood, but apparently all three of this branch's copies had been stolen. Apparently not even books about crime are safe from crime these days. Go figure.
I went to the library today for the first time in a couple of years. It's not that I haven't been reading, just so you know; I get a steady supply of books from my parents' collection, all with amusing seventies cover art and aggressive underlining and margin notes. But I used to really enjoy going to the main branch of the public library -- where they had musical practice rooms and some interesting rare books in addition to a particularly pungent set of homeless people -- back when I still worked down in that area. Now it's about four el stops away from my job, though, so I'm stuck with the branch up here in Lakeview, which seems to view itself as more of a free version of Blockbuster. Seriously, there couldn't have been more than a couple thousand books in there, but there were two copies of "Maid in Manhattan." J. Lo is the new James Joyce, from what I'm told.
Anyway, I selected a copy of Les Miserables to continue my trend of reading things I'm embarrassed to not have read in high school. I'm a little terrified that people will think I'm reading it because I'm the only person in America still excited about the musical, but I'm willing to give it a shot. Maybe I'll wrap the cover in brown paper so people will just think I'm reading porn.
I also wanted to get Devil in the White City, finding myself to be still in a bit of a Halloween mood, but apparently all three of this branch's copies had been stolen. Apparently not even books about crime are safe from crime these days. Go figure.
