Library Haul

Yesterday, I went to my local public library and picked up several books. I usually read things in electronic form (ebooks and audiobooks -- most often borrowed from the public library as well), but I do enjoy being able to hold and contemplate the hardcover book from time to time as I read.

Currently I am reading Version Control by Dexter Palmer. I suppose it could be called a science fiction book about time travel, but it is much more than that. Here is how Alison MacAdam at NPR described it:

If you share my anxiety about the imminence of self-driving cars (let’s be honest; it freaks me out), Dexter Palmer has already got your number. Version Control is hard to classify: science fiction, literary fiction, thriller. It takes place in a recognizable near-future; our experiments are its reality. Rebecca Wright is married to a physicist who is endeavoring to create a “causality violation device.” (He hates when you call it a “time machine.”) Rebecca’s growing unease with the world around her clearly relates to that device, those self-driving cars and the Wrights’ strange yet lovely son — but I’ll let you find out the rest.

I have yet to read Palmer's earlier book The Dream of Perpetual Motion, but I decided to pick it up while I was at the library when I saw it on the shelf next to Version Control. 

I recently finished reading The Netanyahus in electronic format, but the hold I put on the library copy finally came in so I took it home as well. The book is less dense and shorter than some of Joshua Cohen's earlier books.

Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin are both books that I spotted on the new books shelf that I have heard good things about. The librarian told me she really liked Zevin's book when she saw what I was checking out.

I recently heard a long conversation with Chloe Cooper Jones on the Ezra Klein Show or podcast. I was impressed with her ideas. I saw her book Easy Beauty on the new book shelf and decided to check it out. Here is Klein's introduction to the show:

As we barrel through our busy lives, we are exposed to beauty time and time again. But so often, we miss it. We’re deep in our thoughts, we’re thinking about our anxieties or our grocery list, or what we just said at the party and deeply regret.

But on occasion, beauty will leap out and strike us, grab us by the shoulders and compel us to see it. Sometimes, it’s simple. Sometimes, it is far more complex. But I think we can all agree that experiencing beauty whenever and wherever each of us finds it is one of the most profound and pleasurable things about being human.

I have been writing about beauty for a long time now, but there aren’t too many people I have come across who have thought about beauty quite as deeply as the writer and philosopher Chloé Cooper Jones. In her recent book, “Easy Beauty,” Jones explores beauty in its many, many forms. She thinks about what beauty standards mean, in a world that completely excludes disabled bodies, like her own, from the realm of envy and desire.

She also thinks about aesthetic beauty. What do we get from seeing an Italian sculpture, or from attending a Beyoncé concert, or being in the audience of a tennis match where Roger Federer works his unique magic? But most helpfully, she applies philosophies of beauty to everyday experiences that all of us can relate to.

Jones argues that beauty doesn’t just make life more fully worth living. Beauty can lift us out of ourselves. It can even change our behaviors and our relationships.

Listening to and thinking about the ideas of Easy Beauty led me to thinking about disability and books. This thinking led to to my discovery of the Barbellion Prize. The prize is defined as follows:

The Barbellion Prize is a British literary award "dedicated to the furtherance of ill and disabled voices in writing".^[1] It is awarded annually to a writer, in any genre, who has a chronic illness or is living with a disability.

The winner of the first Barbellion Prize in 2020 was Riva Lehrer for her book Golem Girl. Lehrer is a visual artist who has spinal bifida. Above is one of her works and a photograph of Lehrer.

I often discover books and other materials when I am browsing at the library. However, the reason I made the trip to the library was to pick up two books that came in through interlibrary loan: Benjamin Moser's Why This World: A biography of Clarice Lispector and Lispector's Complete Stories (in English translation). I enjoyed Moser's epic biography of Susan Sontag a couple years ago. I plan to read Why This World as soon as I finish Version Control.