I just cleaned out about 200 books from my apartment, got help from a very sweet car service driver (thank you, again, Arecibo), and hauled them to Housing Works. I realized that if it felt like it was someone's big pitch with their agent for their nonfiction blockbuster or like it really could have been several (even fascinating) magazine articles or just a sort of ego book pitch, I didn't want it in my house. Just the real books--the ones that insist on being written, the ones that are lucky as hell to make any money at all, the ones that really just appear through the ether and demand existence on planet earth--these are the books I'm keeping in my apartment. (I chose completely intuitively, but my intuition was based on: does the writer's ego have more of a grip here than the wild divine structure of the narrative? If so, see ya later, honeybunch).
A lot of the keepers, recently, are graphic novels, I guess that shouldn't be a surprise, because that's where the publishers are taking risks.
At the last minute, I was scared to get rid of those books. Then: so relieved. Especially to ditch the motherfucking Chicago Manual, let me tell you (as someone who even briefly proofread encyclopedia bibliographies for a living, this was heaven).
I guess you could say it's sad, but I don't think it is--that most books are pretty predictable, and only a small number every year really floor me, would stay on my bookshelf. Only a few would tempt me to make out with them at the bar and piss off my boyfriend, let's say. Okay that's a crap metaphor. Because I get to gather a lot of these authors of the real books that are not just a media pitch together for the reading series and there is no making out happening there, perverts.
I was reading about how in the UK they are serving amazing healthy food that the children despise and this is so much more exciting to me than most art happening at the moment. You know? I think I was spoiled being 16 years old in 1988--Public Enemy and Cindy Sherman and Spike Lee--I thought it was always going to be that exciting.
Anyway, at least there is Weeds. xoooElizabeth