"Book Search 2000" Amplification
citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Sun, 12 Dec 1999 16:21:01 -0800
"Book Search 2000" was an attempt (perhaps an Edwardian diversion, if Matt
be right) to focus fishes on making a New Year's Resolution and to extract
from them a list of ten books and/or authors _they never have read_; books
they might have intended to read _for years_ (but hadn't gotten around to
it for one reason or other: perhaps never found the physical book); books
recommended by friends (that were jotted down on an ever-growing to-read
list, or just carried in the head) or books recommended by strangers
(perhaps a poet recommended by a handsome woman hailing from Czechoslovakia
one has met in the main library); books that cropped up on websites of
fellow members of list serves; author's names embedded in stories by a
writer one might love; books by former professors now appearing in
bibliographies; titles that, like ants or mushrooms after rain, recur in
peculiar posts; or books encountered in of all places: book reviews. Most
likely, Book Search 2000 would yield a majority of books the lister probably
never would have seen in the flesh: size, binding, with or without dust
jacket, author photo or not, the color of the cover, typography, all of
these as unknown as the words within the text.
--Regards to all,
Bruce.