my new place is a charming little green house in the downtown neighborhood of boulder. i'm assuming it's a post-war building, so it's probably fifty or sixty years old, and beginning to show its age. the house has a veranda with a swinging porch chair that can fit two (swoon!), and sits on a fetching little tree-lined avenue with everyone's cars parked out on the street. i like to sit out on the porch watching people parallel park, though i pretend i'm reading so as not to appear rude.
i'll make a more detailed post on the aforementioned soon, but, in the mean-time, i've picked up some good books lately. boulder has more used book-stores than any city around, so the pickings are normally pretty good. red letter books, on pearl at 18th, is a neat place, as is trident café, on pearl at 10th, and beat book shop , on pearl at 17th, which has some sort of connection to allen ginsberg when he lived here. ginsberg helped start up the jack kerouac school of disembodied poetics at naropa univerity, which is the only accredited buddhist university in america, and whose campus is on my street. left hand books, on pearl and broadway, is good if you're into radical political literature, chiefly of the socialist and anarchist ideologies.
most of what i picked up is from the fifties and sixties, though one book, on liberty by mill, was from 1947, which was really a neat find. the newest book from the lot, about sixteen or seventeen from the last few weeks, is only about fourteen years old, but it's dante's inferno, and that's a good book for two dollars, especially because it's hardcover and still has the dustjacket.
mostly non-fiction this time around, and i think, subconsciously, at least, the fact that i have three philosophy courses this semester may have influenced my selection. there's three books on plato, two on kant, three on aristotle, four on freud, and a number of others. freud is less philosophy than psychology, i suppose, but since they're all tomes actually written by the viennese doctor, they're probably my favorites.
sigmund looks exceptionally ridiculous on the cover of civilization and its discontents, and from the photo i can easily imagine him on some halloween television special, telling scary stories for children.
if i could get a hold of an old copy of the interpretation of dreams, that would be tops. i will be on the look-out next time, no doubt.
a few of the books are old study guides from the fifties, called "monarch notes." i have two copies, on kant and aristotle, which, according to the cover description, are "designed to stimulate the reader's interest, deepen his enjoyment, and encourage the desire to enrich his learning."
another neat book is one called message from la mancha, which was published by april editions in 1973. it contains a bunch of quotes from don quixote, plus some charming images.
all those who are contented
with this life pass
like a shadow and a dream, or
whither like the
flower in the field.
so, not bad, all in all, and i've also bought up some really interesting political pamphlets from a small communist group that came onto campus last week. they were on a subscription drive for their party newspaper, workers vanguard, and though i didn't have enough money to subscribe i did buy some literature on trotsky and some other things. i have a thing for radical political literature, and my collection is getting pretty good. it fluctuates though, from time to time, because whenever i hear someone mention an issue or what-not, i tend to give them anything i have on it. a misguided expression of solidarity, perhaps, but what can you do.
i probably won't dig into these books for awhile (if ever, let's be serious), because my school reading-list is pretty hefty as it is. i'm also going through marx's das kapital for the second time, as well, accompanied this instance with david harvey's excellent companion. that's all for now, loves, talk soon.
