New Book

Do you ever start reading a book for no particular reason at all? You're really only mildly interested in the time period and the historical figures portrayed in the book, you're not looking to get super involved in a long story, yet something still draws you to this book. I seem to be having this experience a lot lately.


The Paris Wife is probably one of the best books I've read in a while. Not because it has shown me something about myself or inspired me to be something more. It was good because it completely sucked me in-to the point where I found myself feeling anxious about the characters in my everyday life. The Paris Wife talks about Ernest Hemmingway's first marriage to Hadley Richardson, how they met in Chicago, and their life together in Paris (having tea with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and drinks with Ezra Pound). The characters really evolve as the story unfolds, and you get a glimpse (though mostly fictionalized) into the mind of the man and woman themselves.


As a result, I've picked up a few more of Hemmingway's books. I think if I had ready access to his papers and letters, I could start an obsession that would only be rivaled by my love and devotion to John Steinbeck and my morbid fascination with all things Henry VIII.


And don't worry all you non-Gertie Stein fans. There are no spontaneous "a woman a cow a love story" passages here. She's more of a minor character. 

Where's My Book?

As I may have mentioned, I am in the midst of grad school; I'm currently working on my master's degree in Library and Information Science.Today is the first day of the fall term, and we've all been asked to do the obligatory "introduce yourself" posts on the discussion boards (have I also mentioned that my grad school program is completely online? Well, it is.) One instructor asked us to talk about something we collect and how it's organized, and a lot of people chose to talk about their book collection.

For someone who wants to be a librarian, my books are not organized at all. Well, maybe not at all; I do group them together by author. But the Steinbeck is sitting next to Bridget Jones's Diary; Gertrude Stein sits next to Jonathan Safran Foer, and David Sedaris stretches out on top of everything because I have no room on the bookshelf, yet I can't get enough of him.

So I wonder if maybe I should re-organize them.... Fiction together over here, memoir on the shelf in my bedroom, super heavy books like The Complete Works of William Shakespeare on the bottom shelf of the super sturdy bookcase...but if I did all that, would I know where things were? Or would I just be shooting myself in the foot when a friend asks to borrow Jane Eyre (because so many friends do ask for that particular book).

I think there are just way too many options; which might be why I've never really had a problem with my current system. And it may be nice for someone working in an ordered library to come home to a bit of comfortable dysfunction. Otherwise I could be like John Cusack's character from High Fidelity and arrange my books-wait for it- autobiographically.