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I was scanning a few articles from several issues of Canadian Social Trends, when my eyes fell upon an intriguing title of an article, triggering a thought from an almost forgotten past, ; late as it was, I had the energy to be patient (yes, yes, because I’m taking time to save paper and ink) to print the article, and read it feverishly, as its outlined ideas seemed to bring forth, or phrase well, my thoughts about variable literacy. My understanding is that we acquire this literacy in our earlier years, and we’ll likely loose it later on if we do not work on it; forever we must tend it, as though we tend a plant, or we raise a child. What about those with multiple reading and writing literacies? What do we loose, what do we gain? Or is it tertium datur (as opposed to the conventional Latin expression)? Or are we doomed?
As I finished Bayard’s book, “How to talk about books…, ” I must admit that I could not avoid that guilt feeling, as if he knew what my problem was, being intensified by his final words–its’ not the book itself that we read that counts, but our idea of it, as that idea, or string of ideas, defines who we are, deep inside. And what can shape our ideas better than our writing them, as simply reading a book, any book, is evanescent, at best, one proof being that I never remember precisely the books, but barely my reactions to them.
It appears as if I’ve given up on writing: I haven’t. It’s been quite hectic here, especially in the last two months, but I’d rather say no more. I wish I could master describing the trivia, but I don’t and, likely, I won’t.
Though not an event, or series of events, doing some reading was quite enjoyable, particularly when I got somewhat tired of job hunting—which, usually, happens in the evening. A few days ago—or what is yesterday?— I realized that I have not done any search with Dialog for quite a while, and that worries me because when I don’t practice a skill, I tend to believe that almost forget it. It might have been this concern that almost pushed me to buy a book about online searching for librarians—not bad at all, the book, I mean, considering that I still need to hone my searching skills.
For some reason, I have the feeling that I may end up working in US, although I prefer to stay here, where I am. Will try to rationalize– or attempt a sensible explanation of — this thought, but I believe that’s too early now (for reasons that I prefer to keep to myself).
Will finish this book, “How to talk about book you haven’t read,” by Pierre Bayard, in a couple of days. It appears that, when talking about books without reading them, we can get away with some astucity. The author thinks that the so-called non-reading is even better, because we all have our “inner” books, whether they are individual or collective. My understanding is that, if this is the case, our cultural being can be so rigid that we impose our own cultural grids on any book. Well, what if we just glorify the power of incommunicability? Meaning that a clash of cultures is almost inevitable, or, to put it nicely, a dialogue of the deaf. In this case, it is a dialogue of non-readers– will they be ever understanding what is the Other’s marked identity? That is the Other’s writing, speech, and rhetoric…
Librarians would be saviours since they don’t need to know the content of books, but only their relationships, or how books are positioned within a cultural chain–according to Bayard. Yet, a book may have its own personality, so distinct in fact, that putting it in a relation with other books, or in a subject category, would make us play, unknowingly, Procustes’ role.
Almost a month after the famous move, I feel that I am slowly settling down and also have a better idea about my new environment. Now, as I am facing a new reality, I am ready for the real challenge in a city in which I know well a couple of people( at the most): that is, the job hunt (haunt).
Will describe, along the way, how that goes.
I’ve done a lot of reading and, to be able to skim faster through so many sites, I discovered the wonders of RSS. Now, that I have played a bit with Zotero, I regret that I have not used it in the library school, as it would have saved a lot of time when I was fervently writing bibliographies.
Anyway, I’ll be back soon with more details about the job hunt. (To say that this effort is challenging is a preposterous understatement.)
