The Book Shopper

Weeding the Library

"A Weeded Collection is a Used Collection"

This adage comes from one of my favorite professors in library school. Shown here is the approximately 150 books which have been purged from our home library. They include: books we read and liked but won't read again, duplicates, books we are never going to read, books we tried and didn't like. Besides the reduced clutter, another benefit is that you find many books that you forgot you even had, which sets your reading queue for the next few months.

The first delivery stop is the Decatur Public Library. Their Friends of the Library Book Sale is next Saturday, February 3rd. Details here.

 

 

Beat Generation Exhibit

The Dream Machine: the Beat Generation & the Counterculture, 1940 -1975 which is currently on exhibit at the Robert Woodruff Library on the Emory University campus grabbed my attention in unexpected ways when I visited last month. As a baby boomer, I knew some of the basics about the beats – Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and William S. Burroughs, but I will admit that I have hardly read them.  I have not even read Kerouac’s On the Road or The Dharma Bums nor could I finish The Subterraneans. However, one passage of Kerouac’s prose  always comes mind when I cross-paths with a person who is that rare combination of energy and wackiness:

 

Part of the Dream Machine exhibit is the collection of little hand printed booklets, newsletters in Courier type, mimeographs in that nasty blue ink, and small press runs of poetry books. These still live today as zines and poetry chap books and high-tech sophisticated blogs.  What made this exhibit more personally enjoyable is my memories as a youth in high school, college and even post-college typing up little satires and photocopying and distributing them to friends. I  have a few of them buried in my file cabinet. Potentially embarrassing, perhaps, but I won’t throw them away. The desire to write and publish runs deep and you could even say that my latest effort Down & Outbound: A Mass Transit Satire was spawned from this same do-it-yourself creative mentality.

The Dream Machine: the Beat Generation & the Counterculture, 1940 -1975 runs until May 15, 2018. One of the best ways to view it is go on the weekends. Parking is free at the Fishburne Parking Deck and the eclectic Carlos Museum Book Shop is open on Saturday and Sunday too. The little book store may even still have a copy of Down & Outbound back in their remainders section. Hurry while supplies last.

 

 

Celebrating the 400th Posting

Begun in November 2008, the Book Shopper blog has had tweaks in format and content, but has stayed true to its main purpose, a personal outlet about my interest in books and book culture. Originally, it concentrated on the metropolitan Atlanta "literary" scene, but that quickly became a tedious exercise, because the majority of book-related events have tended to be dull and formulaic.  (Culturally, football dominates in Georgia, in case you are wondering.)  Besides, these days, for many writer events you have to pay an admission or buy the book ahead of time.

The 300th blog posting featured "Book Covers the Color of Lipstick" and this NYT photo by Emily Beryl.

However, I have been able to enjoy the company of some local book people along the way and had brushes with some bigger names. The latter have included  author William Chatterton Williams (I was there when he shared the stage with the rapper Killer Mike),  New York Times columnist Rob Walker, photographer Emily Berl,  and  filmmaker James Benning, who allowed me to host his Unabomber Library photos in the blog, and these accounts for at least half of my search engine traffic. (Anarchists are trending.)  One of my favorite writers, David Shields, and publisher Paul Dry have also graced the blog. If you want to read more about these encounters,  just type any of these names into the blog's search bar. And to view highlights of the first 300 postings, visit here.

Perhaps the best thing to come out of the blog is that it has kept me writing over the years and it provides a kind of  archive of what I have been experiencing in my personal reading life.  Accompanying me on this  journey has been my longtime partner, Denise Casey. She edits some of the postings; and when these entries read smoothly she has had a part,  and when they don't, well...

The 10th anniversary of the blog comes later in November of 2018 --a kind of Year of Jubilee? I don't think I will need Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium for the venue, but maybe I can rent a Mercedes-Benz station wagon and I can do a tailgate party.

 

Atlanta Book Skyline by Caitlin Salmon