ah, summer vacation (all 3 weeks of it, including 10 work days)!

I am enjoying these 3 weeks off from school (between Summer and Fall terms), however, I of course have assigned myself 3 books to read during this time! I am currently really enjoying The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (I have the 1912 edition from my workplace's collection). Some friends told me the text has all kinds of strange history, including translation from English to French and back to English, and revision by Franklin at later points in life, which actually makes it that much more interesting to me because if I wanted just the facts, I would just read the Wikipedia page (or maybe the Encyclopedia Britannica if I felt that would have better accuracy)! The book is an excellent cultural artifact (especially this 1912 edition with its now-dated explanatory footnotes)!

bigtime CEOs' personal libraries

Fancy schmancy personal/private libraries of big CEOs; article in NYT

quote:
“As head of a global company, everything attracts me as a reader, books about different cultures, countries, problems. I read for pleasure and to find other perspectives on how to think or solve a problem..."

Online books and Digital Library projects at Penn

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/ Digital Library projects at Penn

AND, there is an online books site hosted by the Penn Libraries, managed by a self-proclaimed "computer scientist who works in a library."

when a library book isn't good enough...

Vaidhyanathan, Siva. The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System. Basic Books Publishers, paperback, ISBN: 0465089852.

For now, for school, I am reading a library copy of this book, but suddenly I have realized I - MUST - OWN - MY - OWN - COPY. I need this book to live in my house with me. (As if that will help me KNOW the contents.) And I want to take lots of notes in the margins (which less scrupulous users of library books do in library books, regardless).

books in my world at the moment

On my nightstand are: "Bestiary: Or the Parade of Orpheus" which is Apollinaire poems in both French & English (with lovely modern woodcut illustrations), a We'moon datebook my sister gave me, and several different diaries (the old-fashioned, hardbound paper ones, of course!). But what I'm actively reading now doesn't fit on my nightstand -- it's "Discovering Computers 2008", required for school. This and the other books I'm reading for school [some of which can be seen in the "Customers who bought this item also bought" feature at the Amazon page for "Discovering Computers"; a nifty little Web2.0 doodad, eh?] are in the locale of my favorite reading area -- the papasan chair in the living room [my cushion is purple, though].

what about a library without books? (which is more & more the direction we're heading)

A room without books is like a body without a soul.
-Cicero (106 BCE - 43 BCE) (Attributed)