The Thin Red Line

So as I passed the umpteenth book under the scanner this afternoon it occurred to me it might be fun to write about the oddest, most unusual or most interesting book that passes through my hands each day. Thus I bring you The Thin Red Line:

Like the worst of cafeteria fare it looked much more appetizing than it turned out to be. With politics in his heart Katz meanders from underground food sales through the slow food movement and on to genetically modified foods and the regulatory activities and activism they’ve inspired exploring a theme that could be summed up as "all eating is political". And that is this book’s downfall, not only because eating is such a complex and personal behavior but because the author’s political agenda greatly interferes with his ability to report on the widely varied topics he attempts to cover.

It turns out that Staci is in town, staying at Kathi’s, and we’ll hopefully see them tomorrow. I didn’t get home from work until well after six and I was just exhausted so tonight was out. If I understand correctly she will be having surgery at UW next week then will be staying on at Kathi’s until the 20-somethingth. Apparently they will not let her fly right home to Boise after the operation.

Meanwhile I had another nice surprise when I got home– the copy of Ethan Mordden’s How’s Your Romance? that I ordered for 99 cents on e-bay came today. I have voraciously read about half of it already and since no work tomorrow I may stay up and finish it. When I think about it, it is amazing to me just how much the book business has changed since I had my first adult job at Waldenbooks in the 80’s. I remember hearing so much about how computers and the Internet would soon eliminate actual printed books, and yet it seems quite the opposite has happened. While things are very difficult for small, independent bricks and mortar bookstores, the distribution power of the amazons has really opened up the business to smaller and self-publishers and once the books have been bought they quickly become available quite cheaply in the huge re-sale market. This particular volume, which is less than 2 years old, was withdrawn from the New York Public Library. All libraries constantly weed their collections to make room for incoming materials and most (including PCLS) sell the withdrawn materials to vendors who peddle them on amazon and e-bay.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 30th, 2007 at 1:37 am and is filed under Book Reviews, Books, Non-Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.