Libraries are the best. Not in a throwback nostalgia potluck sort of way but in a
‘wow, free books are the best’ sort of way. Knowledge is power ya’ll. I was a late bloomer to getting a library card in New York,
I’ve only had one since May 2011, and it was obtained the laziest way possible
via my friend who works for the Brooklyn Public Library setting up my
account, mailing me my card and even giving me a pin number. I’m a princess. Well since then, I have been checking
out books in spurts and the statement, “I will never buy another book again,”
is pretty close to the truth (except for the hard to find ones and the ‘crap
I’m stuck in the airport’ situations [borrowing books also makes up 30-50% of
the books I read as well]).
Reading, language and the devices that literature, non-fictions, and all
the variations in between is the base for my thought processes and
understanding of all the jumble and amazingness that is human feeling, thought
and accomplishment.
Currently there is this familiar, yet still annoying, desire
for nostalgia that is rampant in the culture as a whole. It is nauseating to the degree it is
latched onto everything but there is an honesty in that impulse. Reading books alone is antithetical to
the communized alterna-states of sharing, expressing, acknowledgement and faux
nihilism (to degrees). Reading a
book versus online snips and clips via computer screen has far more impact in
my ability to retain information.
I know that this will and must inevitably shift to more mediated ways of
accessing and consuming information and ideas but until then, I declare myself
as a book in bed type of gal.
Reading is an antidote to all the clickety eye roving that consists of
80% of my eyeball powers a day and it helps the brain to exercise other muscles
and to create new pathways that makes this knowledge hunt more fertile and
regenerative.
Below is the full list of books that I have taken out or
have on hold from May 23, 2011 till today.
Magritte and Photography, Roegiers, Patrick;
translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti. New York, NY: Ludion :
D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2005. Call # 759.9493 MAGRITTE R
Magritte / Siedfried, Gohr, Siegfried. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art ; New York, N.Y. : Distributed by Harry N. Abrams, c2000. Call #
759.9493 G
Macbeth , Shakespeare,
William, edited and with an
introduction by Harold Bloom ; volume editor, Janyce Marson. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism,
c2008. Call # 822.33 S52 T6 B
Good Morning,
Midnight, Rhys, Jean. New York: W.W. Norton, [1986]. Call #
FIC RHYS
A Moveable Feast,
Hemingway, Ernest, the restored edition; foreword by Patrick Hemingway ; edited
with an introduction by Seán Hemingway,. New York: Scribner,
2009. Call # B HEMINGWAY M
Macbeth, Shakespeare,
William, edited by Roma Gill.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Call # 822.33 S52 T5 G
Lives of the
Artists, Tomkins, Calvin. New York: Henry Holt and Co.,
2008. Call # 700.92 T
Tender is the
Night, Fitzgerald, F.Scott. New York: Scribner Paperback
Fiction, 1995. Call # FIC FITZGERALD
Wide Sargasso
Sea, Rhys, Jean. Norton,
1966. Call # FIC RHYS
Pale Fire,
Nabokov, Vladimir. New York:
Vintage Internation, 1989. Call # PIC NABOKOV
Macbeth,
Shakespeare, William; edited by David Bevington and David Scott Kastan. New
York, NY: Bantam Dell, 2005. Call
# 822.33 S52T5 B
A Dance with
Dragons, Martin, George R.R. New York: Bantam Books, c2011, Call # FIC
MARTIN
1Q84,
Murakami, Haruki; translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. Call # FIC MURAKAMI
The House of
Mirth, Wharton, Edith. New
York: Knopf, c1991, Call # FIC WHARTON
A Room of One's
Own, Woolf, Virginia; foreword by Mary Gordon. San Diego :Harcourt Brace,
1989, Call # 824 W
Color of
Darkness, Purdy, James, 1957, Call # FIC
Simulations,
Baudrillard, Jean; translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman.
New York, NY: Semiotext(e), Inc. c1983.
Call # 194 B
Despair,
Nabokov, Vladimir. New York:
Vintage Books, 1989. Call # FIC
NABOKOV
Blood Meridian,
or, The Evening Redness in the West, McCarthy, Cormac. New York: Vintage
Books, 1992. Call # FIC MCCARTHY
The Eye of the
World, Jordan, Robert. New
York: T. Dorherty Associates, 1990.
Call # FIC JORDAN
Duchamp : A
Biography, Tomkins, Calvin.
New York: H. Holt, 1996. Call # B DUCHAMP T
HOLDS:
The Medium is
the Message, McLuhan, Marshall [and] Quentin Fiore. Co-ordinated by Jerome
Agel. Random House c1967, Call # 301.243 M166 M2
The Comedians,
Greene, Graham; introduction by Paul Theroux. New York: Penguin Books. Call #
FIC GREENE
The Creative
Mind, Bergson, Henri; translated by Mabelle L. Andison. New York: Greenwood
Press, 1968 [c1946]. Call # 194
B94 CR
The Age of Anxiety,
A Baroque Eclogue, Auden, W.H. (Wystan Hugh), Random House [c1947]. Call # 821 A89 AG
New Collected
Poems, Oppen, George ; edited with an introduction and notes by Michael
Davidson ; preface by Eliot Weinberger. New York: New Directions, c2008. Call # 811 O
The Great Hunt,
Jordan, Robert. New York: Tor
Books, c1991. Call # FIC JORDAN