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Friday, February 25, 2005
Michael Gorman suggests that he's not an idiot, and strikes back:: In the eyes of bloggers, my sin lay in suggesting that Google is OK at giving access to random bits of information but would be terrible at giving access to the recorded knowledge that is the substance of scholarly books. I went further and came up with the unoriginal idea that the thing to do with a scholarly book is to read it, preferably not on a screen. It turns out that the Blog People (or their subclass who are interested in computers and the glorification of information) have a fanatical belief in the transforming power of digitization and a consequent horror of, and contempt for, heretics who do not share that belief.More: "Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs. In that case, their rejection of my view is quite understandable." Meanwhile, I'm browsing the Library Journal online to see what complex texts and scholarly books are most in demand by library patrons whose intellectual needs are presumably not met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs: The Books Most Borrowed in U.S. Libraries - Fiction - WEEK OF MARCH 1, 2005 *London Bridges.* /James Patterson/ Little, Brown *The Da Vinci Code.* / Brown, Dan/ Doubleday *The Broker.* / Grisham, John/ Doubleday *Trace.* / Cornwell, Patricia/ Putnam *Echoes.* / Steel, Danielle/ Delacorte *Skeleton Man.* / Hillerman, Tony./ HarperCollins *Whiteout.* / Follett, Ken./ Dutton *Northern Lights.* /Nora Roberts/ Putnam *The Five People You Meet in Heaven.* / Albom, Mitch/ Hyperion *The Plot Against America.* / Roth, Philip/ Houghton Mifflin *R Is for Ricochet.* /Sue Grafton/ Putnam *Hour Game.* / Baldacci, David/ Warner *Black Wind.* / Cussler, Clive/ Putnam *White Hot.* / BROWN, Sandra/ Simon & Schuster *The Kite Runner.* /Khaled Hosseini/ Riverhead: Putnam All, all, -- I'm sure, "complex texts." Nonfiction? 1 America (The Book). Jon Stewart 2 My Life. Bill Clinton 3 He's Just Not That into You. Greg Behrendt 4 Reading Lolita in Tehran. Azar Nafisi 5 His Excellency: George Washington. Ellis, Joseph J. 6 A Paper Life. Tatum O'Neal 7 Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Sedaris, David 8 The South Beach Diet. Arthur Agatston 9 Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Lynne Truss 10 The Perricone Promise: Look Younger, Live Longer in Three Easy Steps. Nicholas Perricone 11 The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty. Kelley, Kitty. 12 The South Beach Diet Cookbook. Arthur Agatston 13 When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?. Carlin, George 14 How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must):The World According to Ann Coulter. Ann Coulter 15 Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Malcolm Gladwell I'm for it-- I'm certainly eager to delve into the complex texts of Dan Brown, John Grisham, Tony Hillerman and Sue Grafton. And I vow to do some sustained reading in the scholarly works of Ann Coulter, George Carlin, and Tatum O'Neal. Hie me to la bibliotecha. (Ooops there I go polyglotting again.) No more random facts and paragraphs for this dude. .
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