re: Reading List
I’ve updated my “Reading List” page with the books I’ve read to date in 2007.
The whole point of this list is not to brag about how much I’ve read (too little) or the level of sophistication (I’ve got some gimmes on there – 40 pages in hardcover is still a book). The point is to brag about the fact that I read at all, which is not only implausible but entirely commendable.
It’s either sad or refreshingly honest that I enjoy buying and having books more than reading them. I might as well put up a page of books that I own, which for our purposes here would be more illustrative of my personality than what I’ve accomplished between those covers.
Yes, if I had to rate these activities in order, right now I’d say I enjoy:
1. Buying books.
2. Having books.
3. Talking about which books I’ve bought or may buy.
4. Talking about books I’ve finished reading.
5. Reading books.
Perfectly sums up the modern American faux-intellectual, non? You don’t see me listing tv shows I watch, eh? Nor reasons why living outside of Manhattan is better than living in Manhattan? (which by the way is the biggest lie so many of us outside boroughers tell ourselves. The disenfranchised among us know, to a man – or a skinny-jeaned woman – that we’d live in Manhattan if we could afford it. Charm only goes so far: Sometimes we’d like to have a cabride home that costs less than twenty bucks. No park rivals Central Park and any feeling of satisfaction with an apartment comes not from the apartment itself but from the “deal” we get on said apartment. Wow, how spacious this is! = Wow, imagine how much this would cost in Manhattan and how much I’m saving right now. In the way that all men live their lives ignoring or according to the universal truth that no one gets out of here alive, so, too, do I and those quiet many convince ourselves that we’re actually happy living in Brooklyn and Queens, to make palatable the syllogism that New York City is the best place in the world to live, and Manhattan is New York City.)
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