Category: dewey decimal project
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Dewey Decimal Project: 447.09 GEN Merde Encore!
The 440s bring me to French. I’m still not up to actually learning a language and this book is thin and looks promising. It turns out that it’s mildly more interesting than reading a dictionary. I kind of hoped that literal translations of some of the expressions would have been provided, but I guess more functionality…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 439.1 WEX Just Say Nu : Yiddish For Every Occasion (When English Just Won’t Do)
As I continue through the 400s, I also strive to avoid having to learn another language. The 430s are German and Germanic languages and I decide on this book, hich looks like it might not be a real learn Yiddish book to check off this decade. It turns out that Wex has written something that’s a…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 422 RIC How Happy Became Homosexual : And Other Mysterious Semantic Shifts
As I get into the 420s the books are now shelved in the foreign language section. The 420s are the English language and most of what’s hear are books for ESL learners, so the pickings are slim. I spot this book and the title catches my attention, I’m curious about the transition of the meaning…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 417.7 MCW The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language
I continue to circle towards the foreign language shelves, but there’s still some space left in the Dewey Decimal system before I get there. The 410s are linguistics, pretty much indistinguishable by the collection at the local library from the 400s, language. From there I selected this book, caught by the punning title. Like Harrison…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 408.9 HAR The Last Speakers: The Quest to Save the World’s Most Endangered Languages
When I looked at the 400s, it seemed a big chunk of the books were missing. Pretty much everything from 430 on. They had been there earlier when I had originally scoped out the library and considered the project before me, but now they were missing. A quick walk around the third floor solved the mystery:…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 391.6 YAL A History of the Breast
The 390s comprise “Customs, etiquette and folklore” which had a lot of books about fashion at my local library. I’m not that interested in fashion, but breasts, on the other hand, struck me as something worthy of spending a book reading about. Yalom writes here about how breasts became eroticized in eroticized in Western culture, which…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 381.45 MIL Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption
The 380s: Commerce, Communications & Transportation. I was tempted to read something about trains when I got here, but then I spotted this, a book about bookselling (with an implicit critique of capitalism in its title!). As my dream in life has been to retire into bookselling, I thought there could be no better option for…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 364.15 In His Sights: A True Story of Love and Obsession
A while ago, one of my friends experienced life with an ex-boyfriend stalking her. I actually met him at one point when he came to a church picnic with my friend. I didn’t realize at the time that his presence was not entirely desired by my friend and he came across as charming and attentive towards…