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Is it too much?
May. 7th, 2010 12:32 amToday I had occasion to go to the Harold Washington Library to get right with the powers that be and pay my fine. I endured the Greenpeace charity hecklers outside and the teeth-gnashing of the checkout worker, as I always do, when I paid my fine with something larger than a $5. And then I decided to take a spin through the books before I left.
I walked over to one corner and checked for the hold I had placed and abandoned the prior week (not there). Then I moseyed up two flights to the main library, and up five more flights to the fiction section. I found an entire row of books--30 feet or so wide, and five shelves high--just for the name "Williams". ("Willis", interestingly, only had three shelves' worth, though I still couldn't find my book.) The fiction section was almost the length of a block.
I'm always shocked by how easily I can find authors I've already read when I go to the library. It's not that I've read an astounding number of books; it's just that the names jump out at me, and I like to re-read books almost as much as I like reading a book for the first time. (Maybe more. A book that I re-read is hardly ever disappointing.) I was there to pick up some sci fi to tide me over until Bujold's book comes out in November. I couldn't find the compilation I was looking for, despite the library having three or four copies available, and ended up with five other books. I considered asking the friendly librarian, but the idea that they would be able to find a misfiled book in that vast expanse was just kind of ludicrous.
What do we do with all these words? How did they all end up in the same place? Being at this library makes my head spin. Harold Washington doesn't organize things in a way that's very intuitive to me, and often I think it's too much, that there's more here than can be contained. Then I start thinking about what to cut, and really can't find anything. (In some ways I think of this building as a no-kill shelter for print media. If it survives anywhere, it's probably in there.) What happens if things get lost? Eventually they will get found. And though it seems incredible that people are pumping out more stories, more essays, more research, the thing that caused me to walk into the library was the publication of two books not yet available there. The rising tide lifts all boats, I suppose.
So let's talk about Connie Willis. What do you think of her?
I walked over to one corner and checked for the hold I had placed and abandoned the prior week (not there). Then I moseyed up two flights to the main library, and up five more flights to the fiction section. I found an entire row of books--30 feet or so wide, and five shelves high--just for the name "Williams". ("Willis", interestingly, only had three shelves' worth, though I still couldn't find my book.) The fiction section was almost the length of a block.
I'm always shocked by how easily I can find authors I've already read when I go to the library. It's not that I've read an astounding number of books; it's just that the names jump out at me, and I like to re-read books almost as much as I like reading a book for the first time. (Maybe more. A book that I re-read is hardly ever disappointing.) I was there to pick up some sci fi to tide me over until Bujold's book comes out in November. I couldn't find the compilation I was looking for, despite the library having three or four copies available, and ended up with five other books. I considered asking the friendly librarian, but the idea that they would be able to find a misfiled book in that vast expanse was just kind of ludicrous.
What do we do with all these words? How did they all end up in the same place? Being at this library makes my head spin. Harold Washington doesn't organize things in a way that's very intuitive to me, and often I think it's too much, that there's more here than can be contained. Then I start thinking about what to cut, and really can't find anything. (In some ways I think of this building as a no-kill shelter for print media. If it survives anywhere, it's probably in there.) What happens if things get lost? Eventually they will get found. And though it seems incredible that people are pumping out more stories, more essays, more research, the thing that caused me to walk into the library was the publication of two books not yet available there. The rising tide lifts all boats, I suppose.
So let's talk about Connie Willis. What do you think of her?
