Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Bibliophilia

Without planning it, I have taken up collecting used books. It is the one impulse buy I seem to be regularly allowing myself. The price is right, at least.

Now I've got to get myself around to reading some of them! In all likelihood, you've been following this blog now for some time, and equally likely you had guessed that I was on page 3 of Down and Out in Paris and London. Well, I'm still there!

There is only one book that my "collection" feels incomplete without, and that is No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories by Miranda July. I read the first short story in an overpriced chain bookstore and I am in love. Miranda turns the most common or familiarly melancholic thought on its head, into something peculiar and interesting, and then goes on to make it endearing. I can't help feeling acceptance of my own similarly screwed up thoughts, when she can make hers so touching, funny, and beautiful:
"Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the Earth, again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet, day after day, alone."
I'm a half ta get me a libary card (mostly for movies, I imagine, since I've canceled my satellite subscription). But that is one book I'm a half ta buy. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

2 comments:

bobisimo said...

I actually considered sending you my copy for your birthday.

bobisimo said...

... for your "birthday"...