too many books

this is the pile i am working my way through this week:



you will be pleased to know that there is a link between this pile and knitting. see the book on top, that's foucault's 'discipline and punish'. it talks about the history of crime and of incarceration, there is a chapter in there im using a lot about the creation and function of delinquency as a tool of ruling class 'othering' and surveillance. and of course, he gives an excellent history of the prison as an institution, in which he talks about the panopticon, bentham's ultimate prison building. anyway, because i am reading this, something caught my eye on bells blog, and this was the link to The Panopticon in her list of blogs. i'd never noticed it before, so off i went, and have discovered franklin, who i think is hilarious. so there you go, not even six degrees of separation between foucault, the pensky file and knitting.

back to the issue of books, i mentioned that i might be checking out some book stores this weekend up in sydney. we started at borders in pitt st, i was a bit tentative about borders because i am, for the most part, an anti-multinational (dont get me wrong, i am a big fan of the espresso frappacinno at starbucks, and i am not a buy-australian-nationalistic type, but i do try and support the little guy where possible). its hard tho when you walk in and they have EVERYTHING you could ever want in the way of books, and they're cheaper than anywhere else. i had already decided however, that i would only buy a knitting book from here, because i knew i was going elsewhere, and you dont want to blow it all at the first shop, do you?

anyway, im happy to report that borders let me down. perhaps their store in canberra is better in this department, but there was nothing in the way of knitting books worth buying, especially considering i am only in the market for sock books, and i dont mean daggy old socks either (im talking 'vintage socks', or 'sensational socks', or 'interweave socks').

so nothing there.

then we went to kinokunya. in my mind, this is the pick of sydney book stores at the moment. this was going to be my fiction-only purchase, but i wandered round to the philosophy section and they had some zizek and lacan there that are hard to find and i held them and turned them over and they were $60 each, and i know they give me a headache when i read them, and i can probly get them on interlibrary loan anyway, so i put them back. it was hard, but i did it. anyway, i thought abbeys would have a better theory section.

so i made do with just one novel. i usually only buy novels for christmas, given every spare minute when im not reading foucault, zizek or lacan, should be spent on knitting, but here i was surrounded by hundreds, no thousands, of fantastically sparkley covered novels, and i got completely and utterly overwhelmed. so i limited myself to one:



alexis wright's carpentaria, and made note of all the ones i am coming back for in a couple of months.

then we stopped for coffee and went on to abbeys, with which i was bitterly disappointed. they do have the whole freud library, and they had one volume of lacan and a cute little paperback of 'history of sexuality' but i am already reading the library copy, so why buy it? their non-fiction is pretty good but only if its new, they dont seem to be stocking nearly as much cultural or social theory as they used to. like, no zizek. i know hes a crazy yugoslav communist post-structuralist, but still....not one.

so i left there empty handed. jo bought some very groovy old style star trek comics at galaxy then we dawdled down the hill to cockle bay wharf where we ate chocolate.



i did buy something there for trent:

(you have to go the coffee blog to open the box and see what $20 buys you at lindt. also i made a coffe blog button. i have gone button mad. did you notice?!)

then we caught the train home. i am disappointed in myself. once upon a time i could easily have spent hundreds of dollars in book stores. i could have done it yesterday. how is it possible to be so overwhelmed with choice, you just cant choose?! it was a lovely weekend tho, faheem's was fantastic as always, the company was brilliant, i am feeling better about things all round, tho still not sure how to deal with Someone at work - perhaps by doing nothing?

but in the meantime i am only 200 people away from getting my ravelry invite, i have a list of sock challenges to write, and a section called 'the repressive hypothesis' to read, so i think i have enough to be getting on with.

love
k xx
ps. carpentaria (yes jo i did start it!) is brilliant.