between the sacred silence and sleep ...

My mind and my computer are both on overdrive today. I have been uploading more CDs to my iPod. It's nice to have a distraction from thinking about how I didn't get the job I really wanted this week. However, I did get hired at Barnes & Noble, which will be awesome even if it doesn't pay well.

So my iPod is almost perfect. It's only 8G, so I can't fit exactly everything I want, but I feel like the mix is quite representative of me. Following, a list of artists included:

ABBA
Alice in Chains
Amy Winehouse (2)
Audioslave
Beastie Boys
Beck (7)
Cake (4)
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Dave Matthews Band (2)
David Bowie
David Cook
Deerhunter
DMX
The Dresden Dolls (3)
Duffy
The Eagles of Death Metal (2)
Elton John
Eminem (4)
En Vogue
Faith No More (2)
Fatboy Slim
Feist
Fiona Apple (3)
George Michael
Girl Talk (3)
The Glass Ocean
Jem
Journey
The Killers
KT Tunstall
Limp Bizkit
Live (2)
Madonna
Natalie Imbruglia
Outkast (2)
Peaches (3)
Pearl Jam
Pink Floyd
Q-Tip
Queens of the Stone Age
The Raconteurs
Red Hot Chili Peppers (2)
Sean Paul
She Wants Revenge
Stevie Wonder
Stone Temple Pilots
Sublime
System of a Down (5)
Tenacious D
The Toadies (2)
Tori Amos (3)
Violent Femmes
The White Stripes (2)

So there isn't nearly enough Tori Amos, White Stripes, Violent Femmes or STP, and Weezer and Jimmy Buffet got the shaft. But once the thing finishes syncing, I'll see how much room is left.

I did manage to finish "Eat, Pray, Love" the other day. Finally! And I got a bit of a start on "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read." I realized Elizabeth Gilbert didn't stump me in the vocab department, really. She included a lot of foreign words but always provided an explanation. I realized this when I ran across the word "mendacity" [tendency to lie] in the new book. But I will make a note of the last sentence I starred: "[S]ome vital transformation is happening in my life, and this transformation needs time and room in order to finish its process undisturbed. ... I'm the cake that just came out of the oven, and it still needs some time to cool before it can be frosted. I don't want to cheat myself out of this precious time. I don't want to lose control of my life again."

There are quite a few intriguing passages in "How to Talk." Basically the book posits that you don't have to read books to know books. I believe that, because there are many books I know but haven't read. It's good to have some validation. The author, Pierre Bayard, is a professor who deals frequently with people who claim to have read Proust-type greats, but who are really only faking it. But they sort of have to, because any one person can consume only a tiny ("infinitesimal") fraction of all the books on earth.

"Our relation to books is a shadowy space haunted by the ghosts of memory, and the real value of books lies in their ability to conjure these specters."

" ... it is his love of books--of all books--that incites him to remain prudently on their periphery, for fear that too pronounced an interest in one of them might cause him to neglect the others."

While that sounds a bit ridiculous, it's actually true. As he explains, knowing a book is not about knowing the pages inside, it's about being able to place that book in its "location" among other books. You have to know the book culture, the relevance.

"To a cultivated or curious person, even the slightest glance at a book's title or cover calls up a series of images and impressions quick to coalesce into an initial opinion, facilitated by the whole set of books represented in the culture at large."

I love this book. The writer of the foreword admits he didn't really even need to read this book in order to talk about it, but of course, he's glad he did. And I think it will be helpful for me in a lot of ways, confirming how I already thought about books, but putting an explanation to it. It will be good for working in publishing, and at the bookstore, where I'll be starting soon. I have missed touching all the books. I know, I'm a freak.