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At least this month, I think I should rename this monthly compilation “Blame the Internet That My Library Hold List Is So Long.” I’m on the reserve list for every one of the books below. And, with the exception of the Don DeLillo novel novella, I learned about each of them via a blog or other internet site.
There is one consequence of this — I have yet to actually buy a book this year so despite the fact my Bibliolust report card (below) isn’t great, I’m still on track for the goals I mentioned last month. It also may mean that B&N and Amazon may be hurting a bit financially so far this year. So, here’s the books on my library lust list:
Eternity Soup: Inside the Quest to End Aging, Greg Critser — Given I learned of this from a New Scientist blog, I’m hoping it doesn’t make my head hurt. But now that 50 is receding in the rear view mirror, the field of “biogerentology” is of great interest to me, even though I’d never heard of it until reading a description of the book.
Lonely: A Memoir, Emily White — A former lawyer in Canada moves to remote Newfoundland and ponders, researchs and writes about loneliness. I am intrigued as to why someone who is already lonely moves to a remote place.
Point Omega, Don DeLillo — I still haven’t made my mind up about DeLillo but since this is one of THE books of 2010, I thought I would grab it while I could.
The Virgin Warrior: The Life and Death of Joan of Arc, Larissa Juliet Taylor — I like medieval history so when I saw someone say on the interweb says that of all the biographies of Joan of Arc “this is the one you want,” I immediately check to see if the library has it.
Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life, Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt — A reference to this on another book blog and checking out the table of contents at Amazon made this work, by two neuroscientists, look intriguing. I’m hoping it’s going to be something like Brain Science for Idiots.
World Made by Hand, James Howard Kuntsler — The fact someone on the interweb described this as “soft” apocalyptic fiction enticed me enough to check and see if the local library had it, which it does.
Year-to-date Report Card:
- Total Bibliolust books: 4
- Number read: 1 (25%)
- Number for which I am still on library reserve waiting list: 2
I went to the library in search of entertainment and discovered the world.
Pete Hamill, “D’Artagnan on Ninth Street“
Bulletin Board
- I’m not surprised because it’s happened before. The National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for its annual awards last Saturday. As a member, I get to vote and, again, not a single book I voted for is on the list. Moreover, I haven’t read any of them. Once again, can you spell “illiterati”?
- Winner blog wonder Doug Viken has started the SD Science Cafe and All-Night Coffee House to serve up material related to science and technology in South Dakota.
Zen Thought of the Week
- A bank time and temperature sign I drove by Thursday said “-0”. Is -0 colder than 0?
Blog Headlines of the Week
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Aldous Huxley, Proper Studies
Defamation suit over a Tweet dismissed because much of Twitter is “pointless babble.” Personally, I think courts could take judicial notice of that.
Jurors in a murder trial in Winnipeg, Manitoba, were sent home early “after the star witness . . . couldn’t stop vomiting while under cross-examination.” (Via.)
Gotta agree with this: “I didn’t know the law” is not a good excuse for any lawyer. (Via.)
A federal appeals court has upheld a Wisconisn prison regulation forbidding inmates from playing Dungeons & Dragons because it “promotes gang-related activity.” (Via.)
Although I’ve not seen this before, I know from experience that the pervasiveness of computerized legal research leads to odd places for law books to go to die.
A former Chinese Supreme Court Justice has been sentenced to life imprisonment for corruption after being convicted of taking more than $570,000 in bribes in return for favorable rulings.
Most lawyers who have never lost a case have not had enough hard cases.
Floyd Abrams
Activist and historian Howard Zinn, best known for his A People’s History of the United States, has died at age 87.
As leftist activists go, Zinn may have generated as much hatred as Noam Chomsky. Yet his People’s History is an essential and important work. Zinn looks at the history of the U.S. from the standpoint of the outsider, minorities and the poor. You can call it revisionist history and no one can argue that it gives only one viewpoint. Zinn himself even says in the book that it “is a biased account,” one that is “disrespectful of governments and respectful of people’s movements of resistance.”
Many find it easy to disregard Zinn because of that. Yet the bias in that work was the bias of people who are rarely heard or too often overlooked in telling the story of America, its people and its government. Zinn recognized something crucial to understanding America and the world. If we don’t take into consideration a variety of perspectives, we are operating with blinders. He tried to at least poke a couple holes in the blinder.
Fortunately, he achieved some success. A People’s History reached one million sales in 2003, in part because it was used in high schools and colleges around the country. The impact was seen in my own household late last year. One of the items my youngest daughter, a college freshman, wanted for Christmas was the latest edition of The Zinn Reader. She undoubtedly knew I was a soft touch for a Zinn book and it was among her Christmas gifts. She’s fortunate she has it with her in her dorm room some 1,200 miles away because my urge to borrow it has grown.
…it became clear to me that the really critical way in which people are deceived by history is not that lies are told, but that things are omitted. If a lie is told, you can check up on it. If something is omitted, you have no way of knowing it has been omitted.
Howard Zinn, April 20, 2001
Too often supposed moral outrage deprives both individuals and government bodies of common sense. The latest case in point? First, a California school district removed a dictionary from all all school shelves after a parent complained about a student finding a definition of “oral sex” in it. Now, the Menifee Union School District is forming a committee to review whether dictionaries containing the definitions for sexual terms should be permanently banned from the district’s classrooms.
The dictionaries at issue, the Merriam-Webster’s 10th edition, are used as reference works in fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms and the concern is whether they are “age-appropriate.” The dictionary is college level but was purchased for the classrooms because there are students who read significantly above their grade levels.
So what is the definition that got one (repeat, one) parent so hot and bothered?
- Main Entry: oral sex
- Function: noun
- Date: 1973
- : oral stimulation of the genital
Given how racy that definition is, the school district should also consider banning computers. After all, the online definition adds the words and has links to the definitions of “cunnilingus” and “fellatio.” And teachers better not ask any of these kids to learn about or do a paper on Bill Clinton or else the schools will need to consider banning newspapers, magazines and encyclopedias.
No doubt there’s plenty of other “objectionable” words in this and other dictionaries in the school, such as prostitute, intercourse, penis or masturbation. Does that justify removing or editing all the dictionaries, even the ones in the libraries? Since when does hiding words mean the acts they describe don’t occur or that kids don’t learn about them?
I do have one suggestion. While the school district looks for those objectionable words, there’s a few others it may want to look up, such as ignorance, overreaction, irrational and asinine.
There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.
Ray Bradbury, “Coda,” Fahrenheit 451
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