Reading and its discontents

You know how it is for employees at a restaurant -- after a couple of weeks you get tired of the (same old) food. I wonder if some librarians undergo a similar "loss of appetite"? At least, that's what flashed through my mind this afternoon as a teenager with a vacant expression swiped the barcode on my books and barely stifled a yawn when she handed it to me . . . would it have made any difference had she known just how long I'd waited to read Brink Lindsey's Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism? (I'd heard an interview with the author on NPR back in 2001 which I was utterly fascinated by and, not being able to afford a brand new copy, had been anxiously waiting for the New York Public Library to acquire a copy ever since.)

I had to wonder how many teenagers feel that delicious thrill that I do every time I get a book from the library, the experience of encountering new authors and exploring new worlds of thought that had me hooked from the time I was a little boy. Some of my most vivid memories from childhood are my visits to the libraries in Pennsylvania & North Carolina, and the many books I discovered there.

Anyway, I'd like to hope that it was just the weather (high 90's and humid), or that she had a long day and couldn't wait to get out of there . . . or perhaps she just didn't give a damn about the struggle for global capitalism.

On a similar note, I'd like to know who determines the acquisitions of the New York Public Library -- this book was first published in December 2001 and I had to wait nearly two years before it was added to the library's collection. And yet, Joseph Stiglitz's Globalization and Its Discontents, also of the same genre, was published in April 2003 and appeared almost instantly on the library bookshelves. What's up wit' 'dat?