things I passed up at the HPL booksale & other observations.

When I was younger, it used to be a very dangerous thing to put me in proximity of a book sale whenever I had money. I would inevitably walk away with at least one or two books under my arm. I've sold more than my fare share of books back to Half Price Books over the years, usually when moving in our out of some place. But I still have an embarassingly substantial private collection of books. Some good, some crap. When you're young and foolish you fantasize about building this fantastic personal library full of the wisdom of the ages, and having the personal pride of having read at least half the books in one's library, etc, etc. When you're older, reality sinks in. You know you can't read all the books on your shelf in one lifetime, much less all the books out there in the wider bibliographic universe, including those books not even written yet. As you get older it becomes a just as much a choice of deciding what is safe NOT to read as it is deciding what to read. I look at my personal collection and see the beginnings of intellectual threads started but not continued, over and over and over. I'd like to believe I've read quite a lot in my lifetime, and been deeply transformed over time by what I've read. But everyday life all too often gets in the way, I find, and some intellectual threads have to be abandoned out of necessity.

I successfully managed to resist making any purchases at the HPL booksale. For one, I'm pretty broke, which usually happens when you lose your job. Second, I've already got limited shelf space, with half my personal books still down in Galveston.

But I did see a few titles that piqued my interest. In particular I saw the library had de-selected the premier documentary on Modern Art, namely Robert Hughes's venerable Shock of the New, a 7 part series tracing the development of Modernism in European art from the late 19th century down to about 1980. I checked this entire series out from HPL in the late 1990s and watched it with undivided attention; it was so intellectually stimulating and fulfilling. I'm vexed that this wonderful documentary is STILL not available on DVD and may never be. Hughes did do a follow up series on American Art called American Visions, and it makes a very nice companion piece to Shock of the New, and it IS available on DVD, but all I have is the companion book to Shock of the New and it was very hard to resist the temptation to buy the original VHS tapes, despite the fact that the quality of the tape was probably questionable after this many years, and it was still $1 per cassette, for a total of $6.00 (would've been $7.00 but they seemed to be missing episode 1). Damn, the BBC produces the best documentaries...I also remember one by BBC Journalist Jack Pizzey on South America called Sweat of the Sun, Tears of the Moon. It was made circa 1985 and gave a good country-by-country survey of the history of the South American continent from pre-columbian times down to the early 80s. It rings a little quaint today, since in 1985 Jack Pizzey held up Colombia as a beacon of hope for the rest of South America. Today that torch has passed decisively to Venezuela. I'm sure HPL de-selected this documentary as well, and I don't think it's ever coming out on DVD either. But I'm glad to have watched it, just the same.

Also saw a very good book called The Art of Living Single, which I could've used the last 6 months out on my own, since I don't think I was doing it right. I'm happily divorced (Sept 2005) and single again, and not necessarily interested in another relationship anytime soon. The book's contents seemed appealing to me, and addressed a number of questions I have been curious about. My life's been too unstable on the emotional and financial fronts lately anyway for a relationship with anyone. When I got home I looked this book up on Amazon and saved it in my personal wish-list, and, as it usually does, Amazon also provided some additional titles for my consideration. Say what you want, I love Amazon...it can be a bibliophile's best friend at times.

There were a few other titles that caught my eye. It was charming to see childrens books for sale that I had once had as a child myself. Some fond memories there. Some unexpected humor, too, in re-reading them with adult eyes.

There was a lot of history books for sale, lots of novels, lots of cook books, lots of "how to" books. A few good, attractive natural sciences titles as well. Lots of schlock as well, but hey, for $2 for hardbacks and $1 for paperbacks, whaddya expect. The re-sort area where I worked today is basically where people bring back books they decide they don't want after all, and we re-sort them to be re-stocked and let someone else have a crack at them. People tend to go a little overboard and bibliobinge and first, then get ahold of themselves and shed all but the very best books before they head to the cashier.

I learned only comparatively recently that HPL's gift policy is that ANY gift donated to HPL will be disposed of through this annual sale and NOT added to the collection. HPL reasons that since most of their books are purchased on approval plans and come pre-cataloged and shelf-ready, it is a waste of money & staff time to (copy-) catalog any donated items, no matter the quality of the individual donated items (admittedly often questionable in the case of gift books). It all makes financial sense, but in a way it limits the public's ability to participate in collection decisions. To HPL's credit, they do have a "Suggest a book" feature on their website, and sometimes they have actually taken me up on my suggestions, but more often they decline to purchase items I suggest, some for legitimate reasons (too narrow in focus, etc), others questionable. Fort Bend Libraries are also fairly responsive to book suggestions from patrons. But I once donated a very high quality audiobook lecture course on the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche to HPL (before I knew their gift policy), and I now know the audiocourse was NEVER added to the collection and probably sold for a nice profit at the annual booksale. I'm glad if they got any funds from the sale, but I would've been happier if they'd added this audiocourse to their holdings. Harris County Libraries have collected these types of audiocourses before, from The Teaching Company (see www.teachco.com - not the current URL, but it re-directs, I think). They are very high quality, with audiocourse lectures given by award-winning US professors recognized for excellence in teaching. Their intellectual history offerings are especially good and impressive. I have my criticisms of The Teaching Company, but I'll save those for another time. I am chagrined to admit how much money I've spent on personal copies of these audiocourses, and I almost always sell them or donate them to libraries aftewards, but they do provide so much intellectual satisfaction, especially if I have a long commute to work. I mostly read "nonfiction", even in my audiobook choices, unless it's collections of short stories, which are just about the perfect length for an audiobook presentation. I did once "read" Turgenev's Fathers and Sons on a long road trip to Austin once. It was okay, but I wouldn't recommend doing it again. I've also enjoyed many of British historian Arnold Toynbee's works in audiobook format, and a good many of Neil Postman's as well. When I read Toynbee's description of his own agnostic atheism, noted how parallel it ran to my own views, I found that very comforting indeed. Always nice to find a kindred spirit. I also enjoyed Peter Gay's biography of Sigmund Freud on audiobook as well, and Paul Fussell's hilarious cultural critique B.A.D. the dumbing down of America. Sheer delights, all these audiobook experiences.

I did survey the audiobook offerings at the HPL booksale, but none of them caught my interest save a study of Oliver Cromwell that I remember seeing on the stacks in past years, but it wasn't interesting enough for me to want to shell out even $2 for it. I guess maybe from a preservation standpoint, audiobooks on CD make more sense these days, but since my car doesn't have a dashboard CD player, I still hate listening to audiobooks in that format. It's cassettes for me until they stop making them altogether. I did finally break down and buy a clunky CD-adapter thing for my car, which plugs into the cigarette lighter, because Sarah Vowell's last book, Assasination Vacation was ONLY available in CD format, not cassette, and I love Sarah Vowell's work too much not to give her a listen. Same with David Sedaris. They're examples of not only great writers but also great storytellers. I admit, both of them are, shall we say, an acquired taste. It takes awhile to get used to their voices, but I wouldn't trade Sarah Vowell's deadpan gallows humor nor Sedaris's searing irony for anything. Sedaris has only gotten better, even more "literary" with age, and Vowell is a solid, engaging writer of history and adept commentator on politics and contemporary culture. I have a secret librarian's crush on Sarah Vowell, honestly.

Well, that's enough biblio-musings for one post. I'm really going to try to keep this thing a "topical" blog, focused on the library world and the bibliographic universe as I relate to it, and keep the personal angst, pathos, and assorted neurosis in check.