Late afternoon entries are becoming the new norm. I don’t like the new norm. I’m the one doing the writing so I should be able to do something about it. Too bad it doesn’t work that way.
Yesterday I went to the library. I discovered that I couldn’t put an online hold on A Storm of Swords the third Song of Fire and Ice book. The website said talk to my librarian. So that’s what I did. It’s because I owed money from years ago. I pled financial hardship and got a discounted fine. The librarian was great and out to help me. That’s the job of librarians, to help people. It’s one of the professions I feel the warmest towards and not because I have friends and family that are librarians. I’ve always felt that way. Like so many occupations traditional held by women, librarians are underpaid. They are underappreciated. There was an opinion piece in the New York Times, In the Land of Self-Defeat about the people in a county in Arkansas that objected to paying the head librarian, $25/hr. Here’s an excerpt that shows the attitude that’s far too common;
When a few of us, including me, pointed out that the candidate for the library job had a master’s degree, more people commented on the uselessness of education. “Call me narrow-minded but I’ve never understood why a librarian needs a four-year degree,” someone wrote. “We were taught Dewey decimal system in grade school. Never sounded like anything too tough.
I made sure that my librarian felt appreciated. I had to leave the library without taking out a book as I had to use the bathroom. When I went to it I found my librarian, the one that was nice to me and has a master’s degree, mopping the floor. The bathroom was flooded, couldn’t be used, and it fell on a librarian to clean up the mess. Even in New York we don’t appreciate librarians enough.
Now that I have eyes and a library card that works I need to plan out what I’ll be reading. Until I get A Storm of Swords, that should take a few weeks, I will read a book I have in the house, A Science Fiction Argosy edited by Damon Knight. After that I’ll refer to my To Read list on Goodreads. There are a couple that I already looked into but are very long so I don’t want to put holds on them till I’m almost finished with Swords. I’ll give you a top ten list of books I want to read. The first two have been on my list since they came out and I want to finally get to them.
- Capital in the Twenty First Century by Thomas Piketty – The game changing book on the economics of inequality.
- The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker – People falsely believe the world is getting more violent, just the opposite is true. We romanticize the past. In primitive societies before nation states a large proportion of the population died by violence.
- The Martian by Andrew Weir – Nothing like good old-fashioned hard science fiction, where the heroes are scientists doing science. I loved the film
- Cosmology by Steven Weinberg – Nothing like old-fashioned hard science by a Nobel Laureate
- The Lion in Winter by William Goldman – Love historical fiction and loved the film.
- Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty Space by my crush Lisa Randall – More hard science. I need some light reading
- Lord Hornblower by C.S. Forester – Maybe I’ll finally finish the Hornblower saga decades after I started
- Leviathan Wakes
(The Expanse #1) by James S.A. Corey – Perhaps the best science fiction TV series ever. I want to read the books it is based on.
That’s all I could come up with quickly. It’s really more than 10 books as several are parts of series I want to finish. The more I read the more book I’ll come across that I want to read. I’m happy to be back in the habit.
Wise Madness 