Hello Douglass, My Old Friend

Seattlest has come to borrow from you again.

The Douglass-Truth library branch is set to re-open on Saturday, October 14th and it couldn't be soon enough. Despite the fact that we've tried vainly to justify our paltry reading habits this summer/fall by blaming it on silly things like getting married, the fact of the matter is that the remodelling project for our neighborhood branch seriously stunted our library habits. Yes, we're that lazy, but the prospect of having to drive into the ID or over to the Montlake branch honestly made us crazy. We can walk to Douglass-Truth, and that's the real beauty of it. It's so small-ecological-footprint we almost blush at the mere thought of it...

Our excitement is even greater because we've just learned about a book that would have us camping out at the library to get our hands on it if we could--Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map, about the killer cholera epidemic in mid-nineteenth century London. This is the kind of historical nonfiction we love, because it focuses on the scientists involved, and how they overcame the dominant, yet incorrect thinking of their time to forge major new scientific discoveries. Books like this are Turkish Delight for geeks (the whole Royal Society subplot is what sadly sucked us into Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle triology), and The Ghost Map releases on the 19th. We'll try not to pace like Rainman for the entire intervening 5 days.

And yes, for those of you (all two of you) thinking that Seattlest is obsessed with the library: we are.