Letter to a Future Lover

Posted on 21 March 2017 by Ander Monson

An exuberant, expansive cataloging of the intimate physical relationship between a reader and a book.Readers of physical books leave traces marginalia, slips of paper, fingerprints, highlighting, inscriptions All books have histories, and libraries are not just collections of books and databases but a medium of long distance communication with other writers and readers Letter to a Future Lover collects several dozen brief pieces written in response to library ephemera with library defined broadly, ranging from university institutions to friends shelves, from a seed library to a KGB prison library and addressed to readers past, present, and future Through these witty, idiosyncratic essays, Ander Monson reflects on the human need to catalog, preserve, and annotate the private and public pleasures of reading the nature of libraries and how the self can be formed through reading and writing. Free Read [ Letter to a Future Lover ] By [ Ander Monson ] For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr Short version I am not the reader for this book.Move along, now, as that s probably all you need to know.If you re still here, it s either to tell me I read this incorrectly and am a moron OR it s because you also read this incorrectly and want to feel kinship with another bad reader.Ok, I guess it could also be because you just want to read the rest of my thoughts on this book because you are bored and are killing time.So you know how when you re at that function and there s a sociology profes Short version I am not the reader for this book.Move along, now, as that s probably all you need to know.If you re still here, it s either to tell me I read this incorrectly and am a moron OR it s because you also read this incorrectly and want to feel kinship with another bad reader.Ok, I guess it could also be because you just want to read the rest of my thoughts on this book because you are bored and are killing time.So you know how when you re at that function and there s a sociology professor who is also a philosophy scholar and has done research on ancient Chinese manuscripts And he s waxing poetic about things that have interested him and have given him many thoughts but he s drunk Or stoned Most likely, both That s how this reads to me.Part of that is my own fault I went into this thinking it was something completely different I actually thought it was written by a librarian or a team of l...I started out into the idea of this book, essays addressed to ephemera found in libraries But after a few, the concept grew tedious, repetitive, uninteresting A stretch to find anything to say that hadn t been said I got halfway and realized I was never going back.I think the original publicat...Letter to a Future Lover s cover promises marginalia, errata, secrets, inscriptions, and ephemera found in libraries I was totally expecting funny stories from librarians across the nation about the oddball things left in library books I ve even heard tell that someone in my own library system found an honest to goodness cooked piece of bacon pressed in a library book Bacon As a bookmark Maybe it s urban legend, but that s the type of stuff I was expecting.Instead, Letter to a Future Lover Letter to a Future Lover s cover promises marginalia, errata, secrets, inscriptions, a...Another reviewer summed this up for me not what I thought I would find given the title and description, which is fine sometimes great magic is found in such a place , but what I found I am clearly not the reader for, and what I found also irked me in the way one gets irked when one feels that if one were just this much smarter a bitlike the author, e.g one would a not expect what one expected and b have been able to immerse oneself in what one found.Tried to say that in a smart w Another reviewer summed this up for me not what I thought I would find given the title and description, which is fine sometimes great magic is found in such a place , but what I found I am clearly not the reader for, and what I found also irked me in the way one gets irked when one feels that if one were just this much smarter a bitlike the author, e.g one ...This sounded so interesting Monson writes short essays about library books and marginalia or other things people have left behind in books National Public Radio calls if, So funny and so smart but never smug I think he is smug He uses words, words, words, that seem to be meant to overwhelm a reader with his wit and wittiness that is so clever that I can t understand much of it But, I m not so very clever On Special Libraries Knowing an infinity is there and unknowable for that is This sounded so interesting Monson writes short essays about library books and marginalia or other things people have left behind in books National Public Radio calls if, So funny and so smart but...Ander Monson s new book is one of the most interesting books of nonfiction I ve read Though I did not have the opportunity to get my hands on the unbound copy and I m kicking myself for it now , it certainly brings up the question of what makes a book It romanticizes the tangible nature of books, but also acknowledges the movement of time, the development of technology, and what it means to be a reader in the 21st century Monson s lyrical essays are best read slowly, savored They do not pro Ander Monson s new book is one of the most interesting books of nonfiction I ve read Though I did not have the opportunity to get my hands on the unbound copy and I m kicking myself for it now , it certainly brings up the question of what makes a book It ...I went with 2 stars instead of 1 because I wrote it off and started skimming pretty early on so I didn t dedicate enough attention to it to deem it completely worthless.I m bummed because I had such high hopes for this book but it wasn t what I expected I thought it would be things found in library books and that sounded really interesting Some parts, like the political defacing in the margins of a book about homosexuality or the inscriptions in old b...I have the crazy unbound box edition, which forced me to think about new ways to read it, because it was an odd artifact I didn t want to just shove it in my bag, because then it d get beat up, and what to do with the pages I d already read, how to keep it all together I felt,than I usually do, that this forced me into a new relationship with reading, though it was one that was maybe undercut by the way all the pages were the same size, and all pretty stiff, printed on cardstock rath I have the crazy unbound box edition, which forced me to think about new ways to read it, because it was an odd artifact I didn t want to just shove it in my bag, because then it d get beat up, and what to do with the pages I d already read, how to keep it all together I felt,than I usually do, that this forced me into a new relationship with reading, though it was one that was maybe undercut by the way all the pages were the same size, and all pretty stiff, printed on cardstock rather than regular or irregular book paper.The book itself is a blizzard of ideas, many of which recur mother and Michigan, Biosphere 2 and the guy who makes mazes, that weird town in TN that I m already forgetting about It accumulates, this book, except when it veers off in strange directions you ve never considered before as a collection of topics, it too pushes you in strange directions, challenges you to recognize its attempts to hang together and its attempts to frustrate that.As far as the reading experi...This book gets high marks for concept and amusing illustrations It definitely delivers on ephemera The problem is its clever prose Monson, evidently a writer of conspicuous originality, is content to conjure with platitude.Though a Bible has no built in disposal ritual, and thus it can be burned, one should generally avoid burning sacred books because of fire s association with the devil and the underworld.Does Monson actually fear the devil and the underworld that might be interesting or i This book gets high marks for concept and amusing illustrations It definitely delivers on ephemera The problem is its clever prose Monson, evidently a writer of conspicuous originality, is content to conjure with platitude.Though a Bible has no built in disposal ritual, and thus it can be burned, one should generally avoid burning sacred books because of fire s association with the devil and the underworld.Does Monson actually fear the devil and the underworld that might be interesting or is he just going gonzo Sometimes he s a merry word slut but promiscuous polysemy takes its toll on playfulness.I kind of can t track that cant in that mome...I was suckered into trying this book based on David Ulin s review in the Los Angeles Times In particular, I wanted to see how Ander Monson set up the interaction between author and reader Write in this book, Monson instructs This line is followed by a blank space, like this Wow, was I tempt...

21 March 2017

Ander Monson