Support Your Local Library

I usually take the care to misspell library on nearly every occasion to (libary being the favorite), but I've decided to take the high road and not do that in my headline.

This week I picked up a great book at the Boulder Public Library, and its really an invaluable resource to me. I tend to buy a lot of books, and although they're mostly used, it still has the tendency to be financially straining. So I've sort of created a cycle to my reading that involves alternating phases of exclusively using the library and exclusively buying my books. There is some overlap, but for the past year or so its worked itself out to be a fairly predictable transition.

One of the best reasons for going to the library is to check out books that you wouldn't normally consider buying, but are still worth a read. Mostly trashy fiction and super serious dense non-fiction--both of which I thoroughly enjoy reading, and the latter of which I'm reading now.

Every Man A Speculator by Steve Fraser is a comprehensive (and I mean comprehensive, complete with thick appendices) history of America's relationship with Wall Street, as sort of a lay man's guide to the most complexly historical parts of our economy. Given the nature of the news the past few weeks, this was an easy choice and is a surprisingly light read. Well, light only in the figurative sense; it's an easy 600 pages.

So generally I'm pretty open with my casual reading regardless of whether or not I'm purchasing. I'll read anything, nearly. Just keep it interesting and keep it moving is the motto I stick to, and I came across this subject via one of my favorite sources of news and cultural commentary, NPR.

I wouldn't say that I'm addicted to NPR, nor have I drank the cool-aide and donated to them or anything, but it does make great background noise for most of my workday. The author, Steve Frase, was on the interview program Fresh Air this past wednesday and lets say he was interesting enough to prompt me to take a walk to the library on my lunch break and pick up one of his books. This isn't his newest title, that one was checked out, but this was one of the books mentioned on Fresh Air.

And remember, kids: knowledge is power!

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Day Off

Spent most of today being punished for going out last night, but was interesting productive as well. I worked on my bitchin linux server for most of the day and am pretty satisfied with what I was able to accomplish. Not only did I get my BOINC client up and running, but I got awm and conky to work finally. And I increased my screen resolution for increased productivity (even if it means ctrl-+'ing every time I open a new tab in firefox).



All suitably nerdy, esp. with the screenshot.

I bought a few more used books today from bookworm, as per usual. Find of the day would have to be Joyce Images by Bob Cato and Greg Vitiello--dozens of great pictures of James Joyce and neat forward by Anthony Burgess.

I attempted to make some nice hi-res scans, but my scanner software was refusing to behave, so I had to settle for slightly lower quality than I wanted. I plan on posting some more of these, but only when I can get a bit better quality out of my scanner, because it can definitely do it.

Also I got a Norton Critical (my favorite edition of pretty much anything) of Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad and Voltaire's hilarious Candide, a nice paperback Great Gatsby from the 70s and a copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man which has lots of juicy crit in it. Nothing new, per se, except the Conrad, but all great editions of books that I tend to read ad nauseum.

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Thomas Pynchon makes my head hurt.

So after finishing Ubik, I'm moving on to a book by the much maligned Thomas Pynchon. Don't get me wrong, I love Gravity's Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49; I even made I through Against the Day--it's just that Pynchon always manages to kick my ass for months at a time.

But since this is a first edition, at least I'm not mangling a
paperback.

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Good readings

I added my Currently-Reading shelf from goodreads.com to the side panel. Goodreads is a great resource for finding interesting reading material and very useful if you have trouble keeping track of your bookshelf (especially if you're like me and its overflowing).
They have other cool widgets too:

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