books! more books! and still more books!

[rivendellrose]

Thanks to the wonderful narsilion (and to a few of her customers who are in the process of moving house and have too much stuff to bother with) I have so many new books! And not just books... these are wonderful books!

On top of the windfalls of advance reading copies I've been snaffling from work (a book examining the insanity of American weddings, Barbara Ehrenreich's latest about white-collar workers, and another about economic dependency in upper-class modern women), and niwatorimegami's rediscovery and subsequent checking-out of my all-time favorite young adult series, The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, I am now the proud owner of a whole pile of fascinating new reading material.

A few highlights of the haul:

An early edition of The Green Fairy Book by Andrew Lang
Earth, Sea, and Sky, which appears to be an entire 19th century book of natural history, and which I am now completely in love
An old but lovely Webster's collegiate dictionary
A big old wonderful thesaurus
A Webster's standard American style manual (only slightly out of date)
A very dated but amusing copy of The Joy of Sex
A book of colloquial French idioms
A cute cartoon book called French for Cats, and my own copy of Le Petit Prince
Numerous books on music, psychology, and anthropology
A couple books of erotica
A handful of pop psychology books
An old book on "Oriental Occultism"
A book on India from 1942
The Book of Tea, written by a Japanese gentleman living in America in 1952
A Handbook on Witches and Diary of a Witch, which amused me so much I didn't so much as look at them til now, but which look to be rather interesting.
A handful of coffee-table type books, including Cooking for Cats, with many adorable recipes and pictures.

I'm struggling now to make room for all of these in my bookshelves, and very happy about that. Oh, and cleaning, too, whenever I don't get distracted and gloat over the books. ♥

Comments

[nekokoban]

Duuuuuuuuude, I wanna see some of those when I get home! Can I? ♥

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Sure. Which ones are you interested in? They're kind of getting spread out among my bookshelves, so I can try to keep track of where I put the ones you want to look at... otherwise it might take some digging for me to find them again. ;)

[stormkpr.livejournal.com]

Please let me know how Barbara Ehrenreich's latest is - it's been on my 'to read' list for a while.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

You bet! So far, it's interesting, but... it sort of feels like she took what she did in Nickel and Dimed and started right out to do the same thing over again in a slightly different context. And in the same way that I found Nickel and Dimed slightly offensive (I've done most of the jobs she described, and my mom has worked for something like ten years for a cleaning company similar to the one she worked for), I find this one similarly both irritating and depressing. The situations she talks about are very upsetting, but I always feel like her attitude slips over into condescension entirely too much for my taste. Maybe I'm just too familiar with (and sensitive about) the subject matters, though.

[stormkpr.livejournal.com]

Seriously, you found it offensive? And your mom has worked for a cleaning company like she described? Can you talk more about that? I found the section on the cleaning company to be just horrifying. It forever changed my view of the whole thing.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

It wasn't what she described, it was just the tone of what she said, I guess. I felt as though even when Ehrenreich was purporting to be making herself just like the people she was working with, she held herself aloof from them in a narrative sense, always pointing out how she was different, with the implication that she was better. As I said, it may be that I was being over-sensitive, and it's certainly been a few years since I read the book. But then as I was reading the new book, she starts out her little job-hunt by hiring something like three job-hunt advisors, all of whom read to me like complete charlatans, and I had to wonder what her point was - that these people are out there to prey on weak and frightened people, or that white-collar people searching for jobs are stupid to fall for that kind of shit? She does fascinating work, and I think it's important, but at the same time I've seen books on the same subject that left me with a lot less of a nasty taste in my mouth.

[stormkpr.livejournal.com]

*nods* Interesting. Thank you. What did you and your mom think of her description of the cleaning industry. Did it jive with her experiences?

[zhapper.livejournal.com]

I've listened to a number of interviews with her. She has some pretty interesting views on the way society works - most of which I found pretty jaded and cynical. She seems like somebody that's convinced everybody out there is trying to put her to the screws. I have the same opinion as you do about Nickel and Dimed.

She seemed to both criticize the work the workers were doing as well as the judgment of the workers themselves. I have no problem with criticizing corporations for the way they treat their workers, but she seems to forget that in order for our country to function properly, people have to work in the service and manufacturing industries. We can't have an economy of liberal book writers.

Her focus wasn't really on how hard it is to live on the relatively meager wages of a low-end job (or the lack of benefits). She seemed to be more obsessed with the aesthetic or social aspects of less-than-desirable careers. She came off, honestly, sounding like she had a little bit of abstract noblesse oblige rather than empathy. I got the feeling she knew what she was going to write before she went undercover.

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

So, what's wrong with Bizzy Broom that is the same as the one in the book? I think for the most part, it's a good company, every company has flaws.....well, except Google of course.
Besides, it's becoming an even better company now that I am the Manager! ;P

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

That's actually not what I was saying - the point I was trying to make was that I've worked for the same kinds of companies she goes underground in for her writing, and while a lot of the stuff she says is accurate, I didn't like the tone she puts on her stories, necessarily.

And yes, of course it's better since you're a manager. ;)

[hoperomantic.livejournal.com]

omg... I'm so envious! *grin*

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Once I get my camera figured out, I'll try to post some pics of the older books. Some of them are just gorgeous. *g*

[hoperomantic.livejournal.com]

Pictures of pretty, pretty books... yippy! *grin*