Bibliomania

Mark Busby

Year
1. Duane's Depressed: A Novel by Larry McMurtry
2. Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond by Larry McMurtry
3. Larry L. King : A Writer's Life in Letters, or, Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye edited by Richard Holland
4. Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison
5. Gardens in the Dunes by Leslie Marmon Silko

Decade
1. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
2. The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
3. Cities of the Plains by Cormac McCarthy
4. The Liar's Club by Mary Karr
5. The John Graves Reader by John Graves
6. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

Desert Island
1. Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
2. The Sounds of Rescue, The Signs of Hope by Robert Flynn
3. The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy
4. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
5. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
6. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
7. The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
8. The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter
9. The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer
10. Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust

Into the Future
O brave new world, that has such gadgets in it, I think, gadget person myself. And I, like some of my bookish friends, have wondered about the future of the book in this gadget-laden world where those coming of age in the new millennium might be driven more and more by the roar of the new. But I don't fear that the Internet or the handheld e-book will mean the end of the book as we know it. For what a mean gadget it is, the self-contained item that needs no batteries, plug-in, latest download, or speedier chips. The book lasts, and the Internet leads us into the strange rainforests of the Amazon.coms, where we can find out more and more about the kinds of books we want to read, can examine reviews, comments, and lists of related books at an easy click and still walk through the silent shelves of our favorite bookstores. Books will become more and more the artifacts they always have been -- fine works of craftsmanship to be held and hefted, smelled, and yes, even read.