Blogging the Bookshelves + Some Finds

I thought about doing a vlog of my bookshelves. But I don’t have a good way to do so. Plus, I’m feeling kind of in a rush to finish some books, so time is at a premium. Among others, I still need to finish my book club book (The Painted Veil) for next week, as well as one of my Classics Circuit books (Strong Poison) for Monday’s post, not to mention Milton, who is getting the shaft this week.

All that to say I am not sharing a vlog of my bookshelves. But surely a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

We got a surprising amount back with our tax return, so I convinced my husband to put a new bookshelf on the “what to do with it” list. I have not had a new bookshelf (for myself) since the year 2000 or so, when I bought two cardboard-backed fake-wood Target bookshelves for about $25 each to store my college collection of books . (We did buy a small bookshelf for our front room when we bought our house last year. It stores our pretty coffee table books in it.) I hope it’s needless to say that my books (of which I’ve been acquiring rapidly over the years) do not fit on those two four-shelf Target things. I had books crammed in them and even then I had some of my books in a box.

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Library Loot and Friday Finds

I blame it on my library. They have warnings on the website sharing that all hold request functions will be disabled next week. What would you do? Exactly. I requested a lot of holds this week.

In the following vlog, I talk about some of them. I also talk about Spotlight Series (particularly the upcoming highlight of the classic books publisher New York Review Books), Persephone Week, the Orbis Terrarum Challenge (which is my new favorite challenge), and some other challenges (too many to link to!)

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Dear D____ Public Library,

I really love your library system in many ways. It is so great that I can request any book in a Chicagoland library and receive it within the week. That pretty much takes care of any book I’ll ever want to read! I like to visit your branch and browse. Your children’s room is likewise chocked full of books, and my son likes finding himself a board book. That was smart of you to put it within his reach! He likes to dump them all out of the bin. He has yet to learn how to put them back in.

But I have a complaint. Continue reading »

What Are Banned Books? (Do I Favor Book Banning?)

A recent blogging discussion has prompted me to ask the question: What is book banning? I’ve never thought it right to ban a book, but since I’ve recently been accused of doing just that, I thought I’d ask all of you what you think. Do I actually favor book banning? I’m stumped here. Continue reading »

Judging a Book by Its Cover

It’s not Maupassant’s fault, but I have a grudge against him already: his book stinks.

The librarian had to retrieve it from The Stacks. The first thing I noticed as she returned was its size. At more than 1300 pages, it thudded on the counter. Then, as she swiped my library card and pushed the book toward me, I smelled it. Musky. Old. Like a 1950s house that hasn’t been aired out in decades. Like puke-colored green shag carpet.

The cover itself isn’t too bad: the top two-thirds has the long title and subtitle and editor written in plain print across a faded (and stained) orange background. Bizarre green faces stare at me from the bottom third of the page.

Then I opened it. The text is about 8 point font. A story ends and the next begins on the same page (that bothers me: a story should stand by itself). And each page is as thin as skin. The book is probably 11 inches tall and 5 inches wide, so with 1300+ pages, a heavy cover, and Bible-thin pages, it’s kind of hard to curl up in bed for some comfort reading. Continue reading »

Stuart Little Was a Banned Book

The New Yorker has an interesting article this week about the development of literature for children and E.B. White’s writing of Stuart Little. Did you know that after it was published in 1945, Stuart Little was banned by many libraries? I haven’t read Stuart Little since I was a child, but I hadn’t realized that and I couldn’t think why it would have been banned. Why would anyone ban a seemingly harmless book about a mouse-child?

The reasons behind the ban are surprising. Banning Stuart Little was a sort of political battle between two woman in the newly developing field of children’s literature. How many other “bans” on books are simply personal?

If you are interested in children’s literature, banned books, or Stuart Little in particular, check out the article. It made me want to reread Stuart Little and see what the fuss was about.

Doomsday for My Book Sources

What would you do if, all of a sudden, your favorite source of books was unavailable?

Whether it’s a local book shop, your town library, or an internet shop … what would you do if, suddenly, they were out of business? Devastatingly, and with no warning? Where would you go for books instead? What would you do? If it was a local business you would try to help out the owners? Would you just calmly start buying from some other store? Visit the library in the next town instead? Would it be devastating? Or just a blip in your reading habit? Continue reading »

Booking Through Thursday: Manual Labor

Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries – if any – do you have in your library?

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