book slut

I'm a book snob, and a book slut.

But, unlike most of my friends, I don't like buying used books, no matter how much the allure of cheap reading gets me all hot and bothered--and how sexy I find libraries (with the free books!), especially large university libraries with the expensive and extensive collection of new academic works.

Discouraged by the pit of lameness and inane coworker drivel I have endure at hospital, I went over to the local chain bookstores today and indulged in about 4.5 hours of work wages toward the Gratuitous Purchase of My Own Books, which I've held off of as a traveler, because of the associated bulk involved in transporting books around the country every three months.

Once again, half of my bed is littered in books: I started in on Carol Ann Lee's The Hidden Life of Otto Frank today, which I'm 2/3 of the way through, and absolutely and thoroughly chilled by the new-to-me revelations of the horrific ironies of the Frank family situation; for example, that Otto Frank's pectin company apparently had a contract with the Wehrmacht during the Occupation of Holland. I've honored the writing of Anne Frank since was thirteen, consider her one of my heroes, and have read just about every book and article I could regarding her biography or writing. I also bought Melissa Muller's biography of Anne Frank, but think I'll need a break in between depressing war time stories.

But, that's okay! Because I also bought Kierkegaard's The Concept of Anxiety, which I've been meaning to read, and Michel Foucault's The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. I realize that the latter book is probably going to be two hundred pages about "the gaze" or regard and how everything on Planet Foucault revolves around the French Revolution, but I think will be germane to and supportive of an academic discussion of nursing-related work trauma. In any case, I will at least have some sort of intellectual inoculation or reprieve from the weirdly boring, bourgeois, constant prattle and general insanity of work, which has been anything but intellectually nourishing as of late.

I also broke down and bought the 6th edition, revised of Wheelock's Latin, and Stone's Latin for the Illiterati for when I'm tired and just want to read pithy translations along side of the original, such as: damnant quod non intelligunt. They damn that which they do not understand.

Babae, et vale!