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The Library

14:42 / 16.02.04

So I joined the local library, it being just around the corner from the office. Mum's a librarian so I've always had a bit of a 'no thanks' thing with them, except for the private esoteric one that i found in a backstreet when I was a teenager. The thing that hadn't rerally sunk in was:

Free books!

And when I found out you could get videos and comics there, well, I joined. I got:

Books
The Assassins: A radical sect in Islam. Not exactly earth-shattering scholar-wise, but a nice refresher to one of my favourite periods of history.

Pythagoras and the Delphic Mysteries: Joyous reprint of some muddled Victorian eso-history, lots of good Pythagorean mythologising. a squared plus b squared and all that.

Comics
Swamp Thing: Curses tpb. not read these creepy stories for years. first appearance of constantine. classics, all that you need to say.

y the last man. brian k vaughan is without a doubt the greatest comics writer writing great comics in a great way right now. there was lots of comics-press spunk fountained across the cover of this one. it was shit shit shit shit shitty shit. really shit. vertigo y'know - for 'mature readers' no less. heh heh heeheh. such a bag of shit.

videos
Orphee - david lynch! look where you went and got your ideas from!
the man in the white suit - obi wan kenobi keeps it clean in classic slice of low-key british sf.
midnight cowboy - made me cry at the end, good party scenes.

i got more too but haven't seen or read it all yet.
what've you got from the library lately? GO LIBRARY:

15:07 / 16.02.04

I love the library. When I was living in Stoke Newington, I was in there all the time, as I lived on the same street. Free shufti at the papers (and The Wire which I like to read, though I've only ever heard of one record they mention per issue), free fast Net connection. I've moved now so have to find the nearest one to me again. Last things remember getting out is Brue Sterling's "Holy Fire" which was, um, ...partially ace and JG Ballard's "Empire of the Sun" - brillant. Being Stokey, it seemed to have a more ker-azy selection than yer average place - lots of books on Shamanism and paganism. Especially love 'em for the free trade paperbacks - read almost the entire Preacher, 100 Bullets, Animal Man and many others...

15:11 / 16.02.04

And what's this private esoteric libray business? Tell more.

My old libraries (when I were a lad) esoteric section was always quite funky - books about UFO's, Borley Rectory, and weird books with pictures of people with ectoplasm coming out of their heads. Always next to the computer section weirdly enough. Though the Crowley books always got nicked - why are occultists such c***ts?

15:59 / 16.02.04

Since I don't have much money any more to spend on stupid crap / nice things (delete as applicable) and I'm now living near a decent library, I've been using it a lot recently instead of buying stuff, especially since CD library + CD burner = FREE MUSIC!! FUCKING ROCK!! Why didn't I think of that before??

I'd always assumed that most of the CDs in libraries were either purpose bought compendiums of 'worthy' educational type music or rubbish stuff people had given away.. not so it seems! So much fun to walk away every weekend with armfuls of free records by the Melvins, Slayer, Monster Magnet and other such decidedly un-educational fare (along with a selection of Krautrock and Country/Blues stuff that I've always wanted to hear, and to help prove I'm not a one-dimensional rock n 'roll neanderthal).

Their selection of comics is also excellent - currently working my way through Akira, Animal Man and the works of Joe Sacco..

Oh, and I picked a DVD of this crazy film about Leonard Cohen.. it was made in 1965 by the Canadian Film Board and it's put together like a public information film with a really stiff voiceover ("Leonard Cohen is aware of his role as the voice of a generation. Here we see him exchanging ideas with several young people whilst enjoying a sandwich.." - that kind of thing).

So, er, hurrah for libraries basically! I'd be pretty bored right now without them.

Oddly, the one thing I haven't been taking advantage of the library for is actual books, of which I have plenty..

16:17 / 16.02.04

Oh, and I picked a DVD of this crazy film about Leonard Cohen.. Oh my God, I need that. What's it called so I can buy it...

or of course request it from my library!!

Currently out on loan to me from my civic library: Twenty Pageants Later, about a 'professional' teen beauty queen's sister who is plain and clever, but still enters a beauty pageant. I actually read this a couple of weeks ago and have forgotten what happens at the end. I expect they're all much better people, though. Deborah Hautzig's Second Star to the Right, which I haven't read in years and which remains the best eating-disorder book ever. Volume of bell hooks' autobiography, Bone Black. Jonathan Self's memoir Self Abuse (do you see?). Marge Piercy's memoir Sleeping with Cats. Nicky Singer's Feather Boy, because every time I went into Borders they practically went on their knees and begged me to buy it, so I ran to the library to save myself. V poor epistolatory teen romance called Dear Venny, Dear Saffron by Gary Crew and Libby Someone.

17:09 / 16.02.04

dude! i read the whole moore run of swamp thing form my library too... and transmet. i also read loads of really terrible star wars comics; rogue squadron and loads of dodgy spin offs.
i should so go back. well, not literally, it was in leatherhead. but i should join here. i've been getting my free comics fix from borders on my lucnh breaks, but reading at home is always better.

does my joining help library funding?

17:11 / 16.02.04

oh! oh! and i read V for Vendetta. fuck, that was an awesome few months.

19:51 / 16.02.04

I love libraries, but find their opening hours profoundly unhelpful - on the off chance i get to one when it is open ande i'm not at work it is extremely unlikely i'll be able to get whatever i get out back for months - which means i have to renew it several times an risk building up a range of fines.

I also suffered from a deeply unsettling library related realization whe I first saw Se7en - namely that someone might have me tagged as a dangerous subversive because of the range of books I'd ordered through my library (every volume mentioned in the film and more besides).

I haven't found a library that stocks Alphaville or Invisible Adversaries on video or DVD yet

But on the plus side Library stocks of graphic novels are improving all the time - from Little Nemo to New X Men, which has got to be a good thing...

20:26 / 16.02.04

Library stocks of graphic novels are improving all the time

I met someone at a conference recently whose job was going round the country convincing libraries to stock more graphic novels and to display them more prominently, etc. Isn't that great? I was going on about how my local library has lots of graphic novels in its "Bookstop" section (where all the cool books are, so you can wander in and pick one up on your lunch break without going into the scary main library) and she was like "Yeah, dude! That was me!"

20:47 / 16.02.04

Here's my stash for the next fortnight or so:-

Paul Auster - Groundwork (Essays and Poems), The Music of Chance, Leviathan, In the Country of Last Things
Suffice to say I'm a little obsessed with him at the moment.

Tony Benn - Arguing for Democracy
Yay Tony Benn!

Richard Francks - Modern Philosophy: The Seventeeth and Eighteenth Centuries
By one of my philosophy tutors. Highly recommended!

Daniel Guerin - Anarchism: From theory to practice
Mainly for the introduction by Chomsky.

Admittedly I've got access to a university library but the civic libraries in Leeds seem to be quite good, compared to what I was used to in Birmingham at least.

21:54 / 16.02.04

Oh my God, I need that. What's it called so I can buy it...

It's called "Ladies and Gentlemen.. Mr. Leonard Cohen", and it's distributed in the UK by a company called Quantum Leap.

It's a strange and unintentionally funny film.. it dates from before he'd made any records, so it's just about his poetry, and he spends the whole thing with a look on his face like "hang on, why are you filming me again?"

22:50 / 16.02.04

Is that the old Cohen documentary where he's hanging out on a Greek island surrounded by girls? (Seriously... it does exist...)

03:00 / 17.02.04

At First Sight (1998) [videorecording]
"A funny and moving story about coping with blindness and the changes that occur when an operation to restore sight is performed" starring Val Kilmer.

I got the general idea of the movie in the first few minutes and didn't watch the rest of the movie. I didn't choose this!

I've requested several texts on Perl to be sent to my local branch because Fridge keeps mocking me for only knowing a little BASIC (yes, I'm that old) and HTML.

03:05 / 17.02.04

BTW, dead flower, if you're interested in Anarchism, see if you can borrow Social Anarchism by Giovanni Baldelli. I liked it so much that I bought a copy.

15:35 / 17.02.04

Thanks for the recommendation. Neither of the libraries seems to have it, so I suppose it shows they're not perfect. I'll keep an eye out for it though, for when I can actually buy some books for a change.