The Strand Bookstore, a famous New York City purveyor of all things printed, has a service called "Books-by-the-Foot," which will provide your movie set, living room, study, or personal library with a veneer of well-read elitism, studious dedication to your field, quirky intellectualism, or whatever image you might be hoping to effect by shelves of books you've never read. After all, why choose and read the books you want when you can pay someone to help you, without uttering a word, scream "don't even try to debate the merits of the Industrial Revolution until you've read each and every book you see on that shelf" or "yes, I'm pretentious, but that's because I read Aristotle in the original Greek!" or "yes, I own every book ever written by Ann Coulter, and all books written by liberals should be burned!"
While these may provide convenient clues to your guests as to which topics should be avoided over dinner, it also seems dangerous should a guest be intimately familiar with a particular volume and begin asking your thoughts on, say, why Louis XIV is simultaneously the most celebrated and reviled of the French kings. That's when you thank God for wine and pour generously, I suppose.
What's on your shelf these days? Have you read those books? Is it your fantasy to have a leather-bound library? (snicker)
I'm now reading: West of Rome by John Fante
I finished not too long ago: 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Been trying to get though: Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal (1st Harry Potter, in Spanish)
Up next: Re-reading a favorite, Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
It's been awhile!
9 years ago
1 comment:
I have 100 Years and Midnight's Children on the shelf. I gave a friend a copy of HP#1 in Latin for his birthday. Apparently it's well used for teaching dead languages (it's also in Ancient Greek).
I'm reading British mysteries right now having just finished Winter's Tale. You being in NYC and all might consider looking for it at the Strand! Plus it's all about New York.
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