Public Library Haul

Yesterday, for the first time since early March, I checked some books out from my public library in person. It was a bit odd in a number of ways. Most of the chairs have been removed. They put plexiglass up at the circulation desk. Everyone has to wear a mask. And there were very few patrons in the library.

Here is what I checked out:

The Metaphysical Club was an informal group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872, to talk about ideas. Its members included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, founder of modern jurisprudence; William James, the father of modern American psychology; and Charles Sanders Peirce, logician, scientist and the founder of semiotics.

In addition to having a great cover, I like the opening:

Toby Fleishman awoke one morning inside the city he'd lived in all his adult life and which was somehow now crawling with women who wanted him. Not just any women, but women who were self-actualized and independent and knew what they wanted. Women who weren't needy or insecure or self-doubting ... these were women who were motivated and available and interesting and interested and exciting and excited. These were women who would not so much wait for you to call them one or two or three socially acceptable days after you meet them as much as send you pictures of their genitals the day before. WOmen who were open-minded and up for anything and vocal about their desires and needs and who used phrases like"put my cards on the table" and "no strings attached" and "I need to be done in ten because I have to pick up Bella from ballet." Women who fuck you like they owed you money, was how our friend Seth put it.

Hawley was the show runner for Fargo, one of my favorite recent television shows.

I have been interested in Robert Bly since at least 1989 when Ted Murphy, a college teacher, suggested I look at his book The Man in the Black Coat Turns.

I don't know if I will read this soon, but I know I will, eventually read Berg's biography of Woodrow Wilson.

This comes from his essay, "Accident."

"Thirty years I'm a cabbie," the small guy sitting behind the wheel tells me, "thirty years and not one accident." It's been almost an hour since I got into his taxi in Beersheba and he hasn't stopped talking for a second. Under different circumstances I would tell him to shut up, but I don't have the energy for that today. Under different circumstances I wouldn't shell out 350 shekels to take a taxi to Tel Aviv. I would take the train. But today I feel that I have to get home as early as I can. Like a melting Popsicle that has to get back to the freezer, like a cell phone that urgently needs to be charged.

Etgar Keret is an Israeli writer who has also done some movies and television shows. I first heard about him on the radio show This American Life.

I have watched most of the first episode of this story on Hulu and I am curious to check out the book. There is a good book tube review of this book:

I first heard about this book when I saw the author give a reading on you tube at the Politics and Prose bookstore. Here is the opening of the biography:

Rarely in the history of the United States has the nation been so ill-served as during the presidency of George W. Bush. When Bush took office in 2001, the federal budget ran a surplus, the national debt stood at a generational low of 56 percent of gross domestic product, and unemployment clocked in at 4 percent -- which most economists consider the practical equivalent of full employment. The government's tax revenue amounted to $2.1trillion annually, of which $1 trillion came from personal income taxes and another $200 billion from corporate taxes.Military spending totaled $350 billion, or 3 percent of GDP -- a low not seen since the late 1940s -- and not one American had been killed in combat in almost a decade. Each dollar bought 1.06 euros or 117 yen. Gasoline cost $1.50 per gallon. Twelve years after the Berlin Wall came down, the United States stood at the pinnacle of authority: the world's only superpower, endowed with democratic legitimacy, the credible champion of the rule of law, the exemplar of freedom and prosperity.

Eight years later the United States found itself in two distant "wars of choice"; military spending constituted 20 percent of all federal outlays and more than 5 percent of the gross domestic product. The final Bush budget was $1.4 trillion in the red and the national debt was out of control. The nation's GDP had increased from $10.3 trillion to $14.2 trillion during those eight years, but a series of tax cuts that Bush introduced had reduced the government's revenue from personal income taxes by 9 percent and corporate taxes by 33 percent. Unemployment stood at 9.3 percent and was rising, two million Americans had lost their homes when a housing bubble burst, and new construction was at a standstill. The stock market had taken a nosedive, the dollar had lost much of its former value, and gasoline sold for $3.27 a gallon. The UNited States remained the world's only superpower, but its reputation abroad was badly tarnished.

Was Bush responsible? Perhaps not for the housing bubble ... Otherwise the answer is a resounding yes. Unprepared for the complexities of governing, with little executive experience and a glaring deficit in his attention span, untutored, untraveled, and unversed in the ways of the world, Bush thrived on making a show of his decisiveness... But his greatest strength became his worst flaw. His self-confidence and decisiveness caused him to do far more damage than a less assertive president would have.

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The great thing about the library is the books are free to check out. And when I am done I give them back so they don't take up space in my house.