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 KirchweyWorlds 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 BakerThe Best of Avram Davidson
edited by Michael KurlandA Gram of Mars - Stories
Becky HagenstonThe 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 ScarfDon't Call It Love - Recovery From Sexual Addiction
Patrick Carnes, PhDThe Remains of the Day
Kazuo IshiguroInfluence - The Psychology of Persuasion
Robert B. Cialdini, PhD
A giftWoman - An Intimate Geography
Natalie AngierLeaping Man Hill
Carol EmshwillerHoldfast - At home in the natural world
Kathleen Dean Moore
February 09, 2000
The Cigarette Girl
Carol WolperOpium - A Portrait of the Heavenly Demon
Barbara Hodgson
June 19, 2000
They Whisper
Robert Olen ButlerDarwin's Dangerous Idea - Evolution and the Meanings of Life
Daniel C. DennettDangerous Women - Warriors, Grannies and Geishas of the Ming
Victoria Cass