own a library

someday I’ll be able to open a library with books that I’ve collected on my own…in a place where people have never had the opportunity to visit one.
It somehow seems like the most perfect thing to do and I hope I can do it..someday.

Between my roommate and me, we have a fairly extensive collection that’ll surely grow over the next 5-9 years.

A Kierkegaard Anthology – ed. Robert Bretall
The European Philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche – ed. Monroe C. Beardsley
Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man – Mann

This doesn’t really belong here, but I’ve been reading a few of Thomas Mann’s short stories, and they made me incredibly sad. Today during my lunch break I sat in the disheveled, gray backroom, trying to look inconspicuous as I scribbled passages onto an old receipt.

New additions:

Writing and Difference – Derrida (my hero)
On Deconstruction – Culler

My local library had a blowout sale, and all the books were 25 cents—no joke! Hence, I bought nine (for a grand total of $2.25!):

Jude the Obscure – Hardy
As I Lay Dying – Faulkner
The Corrections – Franzen
Vineland – Pynchon
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Women in Love – Lawrence
A Grain of Wheat – Ngugi
The Waste Land and Other Poems – T.S. Eliot
A Home at the End of the World – Cunningham

My problem is I tend to lend books to the unscrupulous. Many people have no idea how to care for books, or even how much some books are worth. A friend of mine moved away with TiHKAL. That is a book we bought new, and now we must get another copy. Some of the books I own were very hard to track down even on Amazon, and when I do find them they must be shipped from very far away. I have got some great ones from the public library’s book store and thrift stores. It is very rewarding to find a great book in such an unorganized place as a thrift store. I can’t just stop lending books, they deserve to be enjoyed by as many people as they can. I just need to exercise some caution. I lent a book called The Invisible Landscape to someone who said they were interested in reading it, but I did not know their reading level. This book is very technical in parts and they never read it and even misplaced it. That is another book I must buy again. These are like my friends and like friends I visit them many times. I need them for reference. I should stop lending my reference books like the public library and start charging fines. (Jesting about the fines)

A Coney Island of the Mind – Ferlinghetti
The Second Sex – de Beauvoir
Amerika – Kafka

The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
Rhetoric of Empricism – J. Law

Illuminations – Benjamin

Philosophical Investigations – Wittgenstein

Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2 (studying for the GREs)

The Bell Jar – Plath (I’m experiencing teen angst in my 20s and enjoy Plath for all her wretchedness)

Against Interpretation – Sontag

The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. 1

What’s My Name? – Farred

Phantom Calls – Farred

A Room of One’s Own – Woolf (I really, really, really have read an embarrassingly little amount of Woolf.)