Having a designer set of Jane Austen displayed with discreet prominence tags one just as soundly as a brittle shelf paperback Louis L’Amours. If you pardon as understandable the inordinate number of books devoted to cooking, for the most part you’ll find my library eclectic enough to deflect instantaneous psychoanalysis. The glaring exception is my copy of Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary, which labels me as a pseudo-intellectual of the vilest sort.
I met a fellow the other day who told me that he had snagged a first edition of the OED for twenty bucks from a library that was cleaning its shelves, and I felt cheap and disgusted with myself for being jealous. Therapy doesn’t help. No.
