Becoming Bradburyian


Lacking any available funds for purchasing books, I have regained a small portion of my formative years, and gotten myself a library card. When I was a youngster, most of my time was spent in libraries, much like the rememberings of Ray Bradbury, although my time was not quite as idyllic, but certainly as rewarding to me.

Books have always been dangerous things, full of the words of knowing strangers, making themselves friends, confidantes, and even clowns and scoundrels, and making me feel, finally, against the full brunt of my social isolation, not alone.

My hope, now that I am wandering more alone and getting more careful with my steps, is to go every Monday and take out a few books, whatever interests me during my browse.

The library was the primeval ooze of the Web, after all, and is still its most ritualized simulacrum.

So, here- the start and the list and the chronicle. We'll see how far this goes, and in what sort of form it ascends from my passage out of the caves that were my life after the Beleza, who, in fear of, I found myself unalive, against my will, almost against my knowledge, and without words.

Reading in the dark.


January 19, 1999

Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin-de-Siècle France
Tamar Garb

What Do Women Want? Bread, Roses, Sex, Power
Erica Jong




January 25, 1999


Wormholes - Essays and Occasional Writings
John Fowles

The Electrical Field
Kerri Sakamoto

Fantastic Alice - New Stories from Wonderland
Edited by Margaret Weis



February 03, 1999


Europa - A Novel
Tim Parks



February 08, 1999


The Engrafted Word - Poems
Karl Kirchwey

Worlds Without End - The exploration of planets known and unknown
John S. Lewis

One Man's Chorus- The Uncollected Writings
Anthony Burgess
Selected with an introduction by Ben Fortner



February 15, 1999


American Ground Zero - The Secret Nuclear War
Carole Gallagher
Foreword by Keith Schneider



February 16, 1999


Selene of the Spirits - A Novel
Melissa Pritchard

Cartesian Sonata - and other novellas
William H. Gass



February 17, 1999


After Silence - Rape and My Journey Back
Nancy Venable Raine



February 19, 1999


High Fidelity - a novel
Nick Hornby
A gift



February 22, 1999


Intersections - The Sycamore Hill Anthology
Edited by : John Kessel, Mark L. Van Name, Richard Butner

Petrolio - a novel
Pier Paolo Pasolini



March 22, 1999


thirst - fiction
Ken Kalfus

The Secret Museum - Pornography in Modern Culture
Walter Kendrick



April 10, 1999


Vox - a novel
Nicholson Baker

The Best of Avram Davidson
edited by Michael Kurland

A Gram of Mars - Stories
Becky Hagenston

The Sparrow
Mary Doria Russell
A gift



-- Oh, vicissitudes.... I come back, I am back, hopefully to continue- but here are some that still await --

January 11, 2000


Unfinished Business - Pressure Points in the Lives of Women
Maggie Scarf

Don't Call It Love - Recovery From Sexual Addiction
Patrick Carnes, PhD

The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro

Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion
Robert B. Cialdini, PhD
A gift

Woman - An Intimate Geography
Natalie Angier

Leaping Man Hill
Carol Emshwiller

Holdfast - At home in the natural world
Kathleen Dean Moore



February 09, 2000


The Cigarette Girl
Carol Wolper

Opium - A Portrait of the Heavenly Demon
Barbara Hodgson



June 19, 2000


They Whisper
Robert Olen Butler

Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Evolution and the Meanings of Life
Daniel C. Dennett

Dangerous Women - Warriors, Grannies and Geishas of the Ming
Victoria Cass




© Monday, June 19, 2000