Enjoying Henry Petroski's The Book on the Bookshelf. He has a slightly unexpected style – very educated, articulate, intelligent – but at the same time rather stiff, with not infrequent falls into gracelessness. Perhaps it's just because he is a design engineer, who has become fascinated with books. I get the sense that he sometimes regards words as tools, to be logically/rationally deployed; and other times he uses metaphors and idioms with a drunken-sailor extravagance (which, in this case, also includes said drunken sailor's inability to exactly control his actions). However, it's still quite wonderful and sensible; it's lots of fun to go into the mechanics of books and bookshelves (more than you might think).
It occurs to me that the slight irritation – that slight ache of the teeth, as it were – that I feel at his style is more my fault than his. After all, he is not a stylist, he is a scholar; and I read too much for pleasure, too much for style. I should be spending much more time on scholarly literature; it's a shame that my own discipline (musicology) is not for the most part known for its interesting style, except for the contemporary radicals – but I should be reading them anyway.
Susan kept the books she needed to read, to work with, at home; at her office were only those professional books that she didn't particularly care about, or needed only for classes. Philip had vast and pleasant bookshelves at home, including his professional books. But I have made the mistake – and, although organizationally sensible, it probably is a mistake – of keeping all of my professional books in my office: a pleasant office indeed, but there is no couch to lie on, and there is always too much of the garbage of unimportant work (administration, classes) that is in the way....
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