What's in my bookshelf here? Well, this is my Western-Pioneer American history collection and Native American. I have the same-sized bookshelf in my hallway with women's fiction, then one more smaller one with more women's fiction and plays. Before I moved here, I gave away three giant boxes of books, and last spring, two more giant boxes of books to W.A.V.I. I still have two more boxes of books in my basement. Books are like socks. You gotta suck up and throw out the old ones sometimes to make room for the new.
Alright, I guess we all can be a little pretentious sometime, but I gotta vent.
There's some pretentious things I cannot stand. Let me give you an example from the way-back-file, many years ago, T. and I used to work for a huge textbook company. Per capita, it had one of the highest amounts of under-employed and over-educated staffs of any place I've ever worked.
I don't remember how the story went, but one night, one of the pretentious "book-buyers" invited us over for an after-hours party. In his living room, he pointed to a puny bookcase and raved about his book collection. It had the stock-gag commerical favorites: Steven King, Mitchner, Tom Clancy. And the token few "I KNOW this is a classic because I had to read it in college" books. You know, Steinbeck, Hemingway, yawn, Melville. Gawd, I HATE seeing people stuff their bookshelves with those, especially when I know they never read them or HAD to read them for college.
I didn't dare look at T, nor did T. look at me, for fear of bombing out laughing over his pretentious alleged hold over the literary market.
LOOK FOLKS, IF YOU DON'T REALLY READ BOOKS, DON'T TRY TO POSTURE THAT YOU DO. A real bibliophile can tell.
So just this spring, I was invited to a get-together of youngsters (20 and early 30-somethings), and it happened again.
People who really don't read much other than a token book or two a year, throwing up a bookcase, with most of the books, ones they've never read annoys me.
I don't know why this annoys me, but it does.
It annoys me the same way that all the Resolutionists (people who swear up and down after New Year's, that they're going to start working out), fill up my gym, get in my way, then disappear after one ore two token months, never to be seen again.
OR, say people who swear up and down that they "Cannot DRINK ordinary tapwater," then, heh, heh, you play a little joke on them and find out they can't even tell the difference, but that's fodder for another post.
'Til then? Hey, if you don't read, just admit it. Put your comic books on display or magazines or collection of troll-dolls from the 70's and call it good. Just be who you are, and quit postering.
Real writers and bibliophiles always know the difference. ARK!
2 comments:
Testing - see you know I'm on your blog, see if your Analytics works and shows my state. It may not show my city but the tower of the city my wireless is connected to.
Was this that Jeff dude who always had a can of tobacco in his back pocket and wore a mullet? I can't remember anyone else who did this, remind me! You know what my sister did? Went to a book fair where they sold these gold embossed books and they bought them just for show for their bookcase, to have something look nice in it. That said, I don't want really ratty looking books in my bookcase but I only keep in there what I've read or what I've purchased and plan to read. Et vous?
OMG. She did that? E'gads.
Yeah, that was Jeff. He was a real winner.
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