The Pleasure of Selection.

[agoodwinsmith]

Last night we went to the bookstore.  I hadn't been in a bookstore since just before Christmas, and it was wonderful to go into our favourite bookstore and smell that bookstore smell.  Mmmmm.  I've been staying out of bookstore because (a) I am erratically employed[1] and there is no saying that the books I buy today might need to have been rent tomorrow, and (b) I buy many more books than I have read, and if I really need a new reading experience[2] I can just go to my piles (yes, plural) of unread books.  But the pleasure of selection in retail therapy is a difficult addiction to break.

And then, once there, there was the issue of coolth.  I knew I was going to write this entry, with the title of "the pleasure of selection", and so then I have to be able to say that I bought books of sufficient worthiness for anyone to think I have sufficient gravitas to be worth reading when I comment about the pleasing things I have selected.  Which anxiety turns out to be a great winnower of the dreck.

The Picking.

I put back a book about Vegan Ice Cream.  No dairy would be good, but the vegan ingredients are not ones I will take the time to make.

I put back a pretty little pink book by Cloe the world-reknowned chocolate conniseur.  It was pretty, and very pink, and had some quite interesting facts, and as a completist on chocolate I should have it, but it is anchored in its time of publication, and it is mostly a well-padded tract for "better quality chocolate, now!"  With photos, I might have been swayed.

Which leads me to a book that I did buy: Nigella Lawson's "Nigella Express".  I haven't purchased her earlier books because as learned in culinary goodness as she is, and as funny as she is to read, she is much more appealling on her TV shows, where she does impossibly gooey things and never gets messy.  Why her previous books have not had photos, I don't know.  My cooking pornography needs photos - lovely, glossy, never-happening-in-real-life photos.  "Nigella Express" has excellent photos.  And a recipe I am going to try out tonight.

I put back a book of circle-casting and rituals by the Zells.  I remember being so disappointed in the early 90's to discover that their unicorns were just goats that had been abused as babies.  The double horn buds were trained to twine around each other.  I know that my friend really suffered a lot of pain with the braces on her teeth, so I can't imagine that having things growing from your head under pressure would feel very good.  Okay, yes, all cultures modify and mutilate animals in one way or another, so why should Wicca be any different, but hippie-wicca going-back-to-nature is not the right setting, I don't think.

I bought a book of Zen Haiku, translated by Jonathan Clements.  It has the most beautiful illustrations.  There were two haiku that tipped the balance in favour of get:  (1) All crying done/ Nothing remains/ But the shell of a cicada.  Basho.  (2) Without my journey,/ And without the spring,/ I would have missed this dawn.  Shiki. 

I didn't buy the Al Gore "An Inconvenient Truth", nor the Naomi Klein "Shock Doctrine" because they are both still in hardback, and I prefer to be tormented with guilt for less.

I did buy the hardback of the post-humously published "Armageddon in Restrospect" by Kurt Vonnegut Junior.  I love reading Vonnegut, especially his speech pieces, but also his fiction.  My favourite is "The Sirens of Titan" closely followed by "Slapstick" and "Breakfast of Champions".  I stopped being able to read his books shortly after "Jailbird".  I am unable to stop reading him once I am started, and sometimes he takes me places I don't want to go.  Even though these previously unpublished pieces range from early to late works, they are as compelling to read as ever.  I only stopped the book before finishing because I had to get out of bed to go pee[3].  Once I closed the book, it was possible to surface and make the rational decision not to open the book again.

And finally, I bought a paperback copy of the 25th Anniversary Edition of "Dune" by Frank Herbert.  Yes, I've read it a bazillion times.  Yes, I already have two paperback copies, somewhere, one even fairly close to hand, that I have recently read.  But this is one of those paperbacks with great binding and beautiful paper, and it simply feels so good to hold.  Reading isn't just about the eyeballs.

[3] - I can do everything except wash my hands without stopping reading, but I don't want to get the book wet, so I close the book and put it out of the way of the water.

[1] - as per tradition, my next new assignment was offered to me on the last day of my current assignment (yesterday).  I have a part-time receptionist stint coming up in a week for an unknown amount of time.  Keeps me internal; keeps me in rent.  Okay.

[2] - I am currently slogging through "The Importance of What We Care About" by Harry G. Frankfurt, which is making me re-realize that I don't care about philosophy.  I bought it on the recommendation of someone on afp for the essay "on Bullshit", which may or may not be good.  I haven't made it that far.  I have the same attitude to reading as to food: no throwing away things that are unpalatable - that's wasteful and waste is a sin.  Things must be eaten all up and things must be read from front to back.  Ugh.

Comments

You WHAT?

[ankhorite.livejournal.com]

You... put... books... BACK?

::: pause for moment of stunned silence and admiration :::

Thanks for the story on the Zells. I didn't know. Shame on them.

I share your fault in [2] above. I need to get past that. I need to learn that there will be more food if I throw this out, and eating it doesn't make the starving-children-in-China feel better, and that life is too short to read bad books.

*sigh*

A deprived childhood can make you peculiar for life.

Re: You WHAT?

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

This is true - but then I think childhood makes everyone peculiar for life. The fear of never having another again is real and debilitating, though. Hate it.