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The 390s comprise “Customs, etiquette and folklore” which had a lot of books about fashion at my local library. I’m not that interested in fashion, but breasts, on the other hand, struck me as something worthy of spending a book reading about. Yalom writes here about how breasts became eroticized in eroticized in Western culture, which […]

The 380s: Commerce, Communications & Transportation. I was tempted to read something about trains when I got here, but then I spotted this, a book about bookselling (with an implicit critique of capitalism in its title!). As my dream in life has been to retire into bookselling, I thought there could be no better option for […]

Rejection is the relentless, powerful hazing that disables ninety-seven out of a hundred talented people. Christine Sneed, “The First Wife.”

By far the best book I’ve read as I’ve worked my way through the Dewey Decimal System. Perhaps it’s because so much of what Coloroso writes echoes and is echoed by other books I’ve read on parenting, discipline and teaching, but it appears that there’s a clear consensus on how to deal with these sorts of […]

The memories this act stirred up were mostly memories of other visits to this cemetery, when her feelings had been more profound. (This is what happens, she supposes, to dramatic events: they create feelings that create other feelings, memories that give way to memories of having them. The older you get, the more life seems […]

A while ago, one of my friends experienced life with an ex-boyfriend stalking her. I actually met him at one point when he came to a church picnic with my friend. I didn’t realize at the time that his presence was not entirely desired by my friend and he came across as charming and attentive towards […]

You can hate thoughts. That‘s interesting. I hate most of my thoughts. Marilynne Robinson, Home.

This was a fair amount of familiar rhetoric, and largely things that I agree with (although I’m more positive on trade than Johnson, or many on the far left, for that matter). Overall, though, perhaps because it was so familiar, I found it a bit wearisome of a read, not unlike listening to Pacifica Radio, which […]

“I once held the position of Technical Lead…” this part of the story is autobiography. The rest, modulo the occasional detail that I borrowed from my years’ experience in tech, is fiction. The obvious inspiration is Melville (the short title I used for filenames and the like for the story was “Bart LB” and I […]