Syllabus #188

I wasn't very Online this week.  I was spending too much time with what, lately, feels like my second family, the Angstroms.  They're so comically dysfunctional, I can't help but revel in the schadenfreude.  Too bad they're a fictional amalgam from the mind of John Updike.  Or thank the lort they aren't real people, let alone people to whom I am related.  At any rate, I'm on book 3 of the tetralogy and I've grown fond of these miserable bastards.

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The only Internet Thing of Note that I consumed this week was this New York Times ode to libraries.  In a rational world, duh, what kind of feral beast doesn't love a library?  But we seem to be doing a lot of defending ourselves and justifying our existences lately.  

"Imagine a teacher who’s responsible for a mixed-age classroom where students are free to wander in and out as they please, all opinions are welcome and detention is not an option. This person is also the principal, the guidance counselor, the school nurse and, occasionally, the janitor. This person is your local librarian.

Yet somehow librarians still find time to match people with the books they need. These selections may be second-guessed by irate taxpayers who don’t know the difference between F. Scott Fitzgerald and L. Ron Hubbard or don’t understand that ideas and stories aren’t contagious; the only disease they’ll infect you with is empathy. Nevertheless, librarians persist. One could argue that they distribute more wings than an airline pilot. Put yours to good use and you can fly anywhere."

Analog Reading:

Finished Tom Perrotta's Mrs. Fletcher.  It was spicy but somehow the ending kind of bummed me out and made me feel sorry for the woman.

Reading Rabbit is Rich.  There are a lot of hilarious lines in this one, and I stand by my assertion that Harry is Gentile Larry David.  Always convinced he's correct, but insisting on it to an asinine extent and coming across as the asshole.  Aside from feeling relieved that I'm not a member of Rabbit's family, it's been interesting to see the progress of this family over the decades now, with Harry being born the same year as my grandmother, and his son, Nelson, born the same year as my mom.  It's funny to try imagining them behaving like any of the people in this book.  Not to imply that just because a real person shares a birth year with a fictional character, they should necessarily have anything else in common, but the books are such close studies of both general American and regionally specific culture (of Southeast Pennsylvania, not far from Philly) that it's hard not to look for parallels.