Diary of a Book Fiend

Some people can go into The Gap or whatever is the hot clothing chain (as seen on TV!) this week... And drop a couple hundred bucks on clothes. Others can destroy their credit ratings and run out of storage space with an afternoon surfing on eBay... Me? I can't resist the books. The printed word. Hardbacks, paperbacks, trade paperbacks, magazines, comics, folios, coffee table books, dustcovers, slipcovers, ripped covers, remaindered, returned, reprinted, misprinted... you name it baby, if it's somehow a book... I want it. Gimme them little squiggles on the page. No romance novels, please. The polite name for it is Bibliophile, or bibliomaniac... something like that.

Hi, my name is Steve and I'm a book junkie.

This past weekend... Half Price books was the target of opportunity. The Parents were in town. Dad and WSM and little bro... we rolled up on Half Price Books, a crack commando team of readers. Our assault was quickly initiated, but slowly resolved. 2 hours and 500 bucks later (I dropped a hundred myself, I know Dad made at least three trips) the back seat of their minivan was a guerilla bookmobile bringing the printed word to the poor starving literary appetit- er addictions of the four of us.

So I picked up a bunch of these graphic novel-esque books called "Introducing (Insert Subject Here)" Wide ranging topics covered in these... the subjects I will be introduced to over the next few days/weeks include Eastern Philosophy, Derrida, Chomsky, Chaos, Evolutionary Psychology, Existentialism, Quantum Theory, Mind & Brain, Relativity, Consciousness... I've already read ones on Semiotics, Foucault, Culutral Criticism, Linguistics, Einstein, and Freud.

I can feel my brainmeats growing with every one of these I read.(Wiggles finger from middle of forehead as if pineal gland has popped out ala "From Beyond") It's...So...Beautiful!!!

Soon I will need to trepan my skull, I will be so overflowing with the knowledges.

The thing I dig about these is their jam-packed fulla info, but done in a graphic novel style. Not comic booky - since that brings to mind spandex and sound effects for most, but a blending of Graphical and Textual Information... Cut and Paste and Line Drawing and Photocollage along with good old written info. Spend a few hours with one of these books and you feel like you just took a pretty decent introduction/survey class to that topic at your local college/learning annex. And of course, Excellent Bibliographies in the back as well... fuel for the fires of my addiction...

Another treasure from our expedition -"Can such things be?" a collection of Ambrose Bierce's short fiction. Alla you cynical hipsters awash in Irony cuz yer favorite webzine tells you it's cool? Try reading Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary" and some of his short fiction to really see what cynicism and irony are about... all wrapped up in a lovely littel package of such utter bleak misanthropy, you'll think G.G. Allin was a really fun guy in comparison. You may remember him (Bierce, not Allin) as the author of the story "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge" or at least had skimmed the Cliff's notes on it... or maybe even saw the Twilight Zone episode.

Also just finished "The Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester. Damn fine book. Easy to see why it's considered one of the greatest Science Fiction novels ever written. Written nearly 50 years ago and yet it's got ideas and concepts in it that some other writers have been squeezing entire careers out of thrown away as single sentences. Wish I could write like that.

Gonna talk smart "...destination" tomorrow, me. Oh yes.