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[personal profile] conuly
I really feel bad. And this is embarassing, because I'm going to sound arrogant.

How on earth can people feel proud of only reading a book a week, or less, even? I can read a book just going to class, and another coming home. It's a sad week when I don't manage to read even one book. High school, I would take out six books from the library at once, return all six within two days. That's not counting the books they gave me, and the ones I read while in the library during lunch. Is it normal to read so little? Is it that people read slowly, or that they have other things to do? I don't get it.

I feel weird now. Like the freak here.

Well, I did tell you not to click. Don't blame me.

Date: 2005-01-02 05:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sailoreagle.livejournal.com
I have no idea and no answer to your question - I can only say, you're not the only one who does that. I'm a voracious reader, as well, and (before I ran out of books I'd not read in the library - yes, I read faster than my local library gets books in) I used to check out... something like 3x or 4x the amount of books that was, in theory, allowed (the librarian knew me). And returned them early. And even now that I have other things to do, I read at least two or three books per week.

If you're a freak, there's a pair of us.

Date: 2005-01-02 05:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sailoreagle.livejournal.com
o.O

Is that a non-exact quote / rephrasing from somewhere? Emily Dickinson comes to mind (the "I'm nobody! Who are you?" poem).

If it wasn't intended, it's still a cool coincidence *L*

Date: 2005-01-02 05:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sailoreagle.livejournal.com
No, actually not exact :) I have the book with all her poems with me me right now.



I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - Too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!

Date: 2005-01-02 05:51 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sailoreagle.livejournal.com
Quite sure.

Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems, Edited by Thomas H. Johnson, ISBN 0-571-10864-4. This one (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0571108644/qid=1104716074/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_10_2/202-0543387-6483009#product-details).

And I've only ever seen it in the form I posted.

I'm suspecting the one on bartleby.com is an edited version - they did that at first with her poems, to make them less odd and more likable. Especially since the capitalization is normalized, there's a very reduced number of dashes (which is exceedingly odd in a Dickinson poem - even her first ones used dashes a lot), the line arrangement is slightly altered (look at lines 3 & 4), and more "sensible" phrasing has been substituted.

The poem - number 288 in the book I have - is marked as having been first published in 1891, in the second book of poems they published by her, back when they still were editing verses.

According to the introduction in the book I have, the first edition to publish all poems by Dickinson the way she wrote them was the 1955 edition, which the book I have is based on. The edition bartleby.com has was published in 1924 (http://www.bartleby.com/br/113.html), and appears to be, from the table of contents (http://www.bartleby.com/113/), a simple collecting of all the volumes that had before been published into a single volume.

It's missing a lot of poems, too, that weren't published until 1929, 1935 and 1945 (three different collections) - it only has 597, while the book I have has 1775.

Date: 2005-01-02 05:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zathras26.livejournal.com
Hee... this reminds me of a joke that's mentioned on an ep of "Babylon 5". They say that any poem by Emily Dickinson can be sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas". I just tried that with this one, and it works. *beg*

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