Random

A recent furniture rearrangement, a recent hard-drive failure, plus a recent email exchange with Asalad reminded me of several things. One, I am gosh darn easy to distract when I'm on a deadline. Two, I have a lot of mp3s of many kinds, and a lot of bookshelves stuffed in random corners. Three, I am a librarian's daughter.

Not making sense to you? Yeah, me neither. Let me try again. I had to move all the bookcases out of the guest room and into the hall because LittleCat had to go in the guest room after her stomach surgery and she wasn't allowed to have anything in there with her that she might jump on and pop her staples out. Now I'm thinking the bookcases look good in the hall, and I should keep them there permanently. But that raises the question, what kinds of books are appropriate for upstairs hallway bookcases? I mean, it's obvious I put my work books in my office. And my fanciest non-work books in the living room, where visitors can see them and be suitably impressed (Hello, James Joyce's Ulysses! My, your spine is looking mighty fresh and uncracked!) and my embarassing cat mysteries in the bedroom, where only my nearest and dearest can mock them (Oh, it's you, Rita Mae Brown. Put some damn soap in your cat's mouth, she curses like a sailor!) But what kind of book is a hallway book? Fiction? Biography? Foreign language?

In a related train of thought, while slowly re-copying all my lost music files back to the hard drive, and simultaneously reading this post on the Stephin Merrit controversy and the playlist meme more generally, I recognized myself with some sheepishness. Not that I'm always posting my random playlists from my iPod as proof of my musical taste,* but that the bookcase placement question which so concerned me is just a grand version of that, in which I try to stack the deck in favor of my self-image as an important intellectual. How much squirmier would I feel all the time if I had to meet with students and colleagues in an office filled with a truly random selection of the books that I own? But maybe it would be good for me. Then I'd have to face up to the fact, that despite having spent many years in pursuit of a doctoral degree in literature, I still like to read books in which animals can both talk and do detective work.

Moral? I need to check more books out of the library, and hope Homeland Security doesn't reveal library records for the purposes of petty humilation.

*To prove I am serious about not having musical taste, here is an unedited take from my iPod. Begin the mockery now:

Like The Weather 10,000 Maniacs MTV Unplugged
The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, Op. 34 (Variations and Fugue On a Theme of Purcell) Variation VI: Violas (Meno Mosso) Arthur Fiedler and The Boston Pops Classics for Children
King Harvest (Has Surely Come) The Band Greatest Hits
Dooinit Common Like Water For Chocolate
Tonight the Heartache's On Me Dixie Chicks Wide Open Spaces
I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone Elvis Presley
Everyone's a Little Bit Racist Original Broadway Cast Avenue Q
New York, New York Ryan Adams
Kiss the Girl Samuel E. Wright The Little Mermaid Disney
Box Full of Letters Wilco A.M.