April 17, 2002

[General] Libraries and Bookstores.

I went to my version of the library the other day, which is to say that I went to the bookstore.

I used to go to libraries. When I was in school, I was in the library club. I was even president one year. Truth be told, though, I wasn't president of the library club because I had a burning love of libraries; I was president because the back room of the library was a cooler place to hang out than study hall. I also could wipe all my late fees, as president.

Which brings me to the real reason I don't go to libraries.It's that whole borrowing concept. I can't seem to ever take the books back.

I don't intend to keep them when I borrow them. I have every intention of rushing home and reading the books and then promptly returning them. Except that time goes quicker than I think and it's time to take them back and I haven't even read them yet and then they're late and then they're really late and I want to wait for a "no fine" day and then that day never comes and the books get put in a box one day when I am cleaning and then I can't find them at all and then I get a letter from the library threatening to arrest me...well, that last part only happened once. But still. I'll bet that I have books in my bookcase from more than one library, carelessly collected over the years. I sort of feel bad about it. Maybe not bad enough to actually try and return them...5 or 15 years later, though.

I have solved this problem of unintentional kleptomania by avoiding libraries all together. Now, I just go to book stores. A more expensive habit, to be sure. But one that won't likely have the sheriff after my ass.

So, on Monday, I went to the bookstore. I went with a purpose, which was to pick up 5 books that I had either read about or had seen previously and not bought. These 5 books were Losing The Race, by John McWhorter, a fairly critical look at the sociology of Black America in the wake of the civil rights movement; Practical Gods, winner of the 2002 Pulitzer for Poetry; The Universe in a Nutshell, by Stephen Hawking; Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, by Randall Kennedy; and another book whose title is escaping me...it was written by a man whose wife barely survived the September 11th tragedy. I had seen it somewhere and assumed, wrongly it turned out, that it would be easy to find anywhere. It wasn't.

What I actually came away with were the Kennedy, McWhorter and Hawking books, plus the new Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grown-Ups and The Nanny Diaries a novel about life among the ultra-privledged, written by two former nannies, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus. These last two were total impluse buys, but they look like they will be good.

Before I go for today, I have to tell you how unbelievebly uncomfortable I felt, as a white woman, buying the Kennedy and McWhorter books. As I was exiting the Black American Studies section of the store, I actually covered up the Kennedy book with the copy of Nanny Diaries that I was holding. The cover is fairly shocking and I guess I just felt like maybe I didn't have the right to read such a book, hadn't earned the right to even be in that section of the store. It was odd. The book is fascinating,though, an historical and linguistic perspective on the most dangerous word in our language. The question of whether the word can be demystified, or even whether it should be, is making for fascinating reading.

Posted by Lori at April 17, 2002 4:41 PM