Tuesday, July 12, 2005

"I cannot live without books"

A quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson -- I feel the same way. I love books. I work all day with books and I have books everywhere in my house (too many books). I actually want to start getting rid of large portions of my collection. I've worked in libraries so long I just don't want to burden any place with gift books even if I think my books are great most libraries just are not staffed to handle gift collections. I've been looking around at all the books in the house that I intend to read -- the list goes on and on. Obviously no one can read everything that is published so I'm trying to be selective. I try to limit fiction to authors that I really enjoy. of course new books are constantly published which makes it very hard to "catch up." I try not to buy books anymore with the exception of those that I want to add to my permanent collection. I am fortunate to work at a small research institution that maintains a small lending library. The library acquires most non-fiction and fiction bestsellers on a monthly basis and the books are available to the staff.

I just read The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. It is Elizabeth Kostova's first novel, and it is a good book. In the afterword she mentions her visit to Philadelphia and her visit to an institution that can only be The Rosenbach Museum & Library.

Yesterday was one of the most unpleasant days of my life! I got to jury duty at 8:15 AM and I was finally dismissed at 6:00 PM others were still being held captive and the judge said they might go as late at 7:30 PM or until she could seat a jury. At 6:00 they had 10 jurors. The case involved 14 counts of rape, sodomy, terrorist threats, aggravated assault, the victims were all children ages 6 to 12 at the time of the crimes. They predict the trial will go through August. I could have kissed the ground when I was dismissed. I would have been a terrible person to have on the jury because just seeing the person charged I thought he "looked guilty" -- now that is really fair!

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