Here's some lyrics to Talking NPR Blues. Like Phil Ochs, Utah kept no sacred cows, even if meant wagging fingers at his own audience.------
I have a summer project. Since the twins came, I've been lax on reading, and have started far more books than I've finished. So, this summer, I intend to read at least one book per week, chosen from whatever books might happen to be on the 7-Day Loan shelves at any particular branch of the Milwaukee Public Library. (I'm a plodding and deliberate reader, but I respond well to deadlines.) I have to rule out books over 500 pages, as 70 pages per day is about all I can reasonably commit to, and only actual prose will count, since poetry and comics are quicker reads for me (because I don't pay sufficient attention to the former, and I eat up the latter like the adolescent geek I truly am). After Labor Day, I will donate an appropriate amount -- say, half the price of each book -- to the library system and/or literacy related causes. (I will also accept sponsorship.)
In the inaugural week of the Brian Re-Literacy Program (BRLP), even before anyone -- myself included -- knew it was the the inaugural week, I read Austin Grossman's Soon I Will Be Invincible, a fun book that gives a literary* and "real world" treatment to Super-heroes and -villians. This week, I'm reading Ron Hansen's Exiles, which concerns German nuns, a shipwreck, and the poet Gerard Manly Hopkins. Ron Hansen wrote the novel that was the basis for the recent Jesse James movie (starring Brad Pitt, and not bad!) , and is also the author of one of the more brutally beautiful stories I've ever read: "Nebraska" from his story collection of the same name.------
Early this morning, I received a call on the emergency red phone in my basement, a phone which only rings when the words "robot" and "monkey" appear in the same New York Times article. (Most of you already know that I'm associated with an underground group working to prevent the coming Cyborg Monkey Apocalypse. I mean, I'm all for technology that might help disabled people move better, but if I've watched the Terminator movies correctly -- and I think I have -- technology sometimes has its down side. See also: Toffler, Alvin; Postman, Neil; Pitt, Brad.)
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* I use the word "literary" here only to agitate my parents. "What does that mean?" they ask. All it means is this (particularly when said in the slightly derogatory way my grandmother would have used the word): fancy.
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2 comments:
Cool project!
It is amazing how much reading time babies and toddlers can suck out of life, isn't it?
Fortunately, I have faith that it gets better. I definitely remember both of my parents reading a lot, so it must.
As much as I am a wannabee librarian, I actually have a sad aversion to any system that requires me to give the books back.
I think that's a great idea. But I don't think you should feel obligated to donate to the library at the end. It's a nice gesture, but the library is there for all of us, for free. It's socialism in action.
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