Books in My Lobby 6

There's been quite a bit of book activity in my lobby recently. I'll start with this classic nugget, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, about Packingtown, the center of Chicago's meatpacking industry in the early 20th century. We know the horrors of how meat gets processed in 2009--imagine what it was like a hundred years ago. Gag. The cover photo of this edition tells it all.

If you don't feel like reading the book (I mean, it's long, and old, and full of ideas--it's like having to watch Battleship Potemkin for school) then check out SparkNotes. It's like Cliffs Notes ("The fastest way to learn") for the Internet, with a chapter-by-chapter synopsis, a page of historical context, and a character breakdown. Brought to you by the people who already make most of America's book buying decisions: Barnes & Noble.

Don't forget your homework:

Books in My Lobby

No, you're not in the wrong blog: I just changed the name from General Ephemera to Unreliable Narrator. Liz came up with that when I included a fiction in my post about seeing The Wedding Present. You'll have to read her comment to figure out what piece of information I twisted for my own bloggy purposes.

People in my building leave books they don't want in the lobby. Here is the first in a series of photos and commentary about these books. What's wrong with these books? Why get rid of them? Who can say? Perhaps taking photos of them and posting them online will answer these and other timeless questions.

Why does this even exist? Why not just read the damn book? These are not short books either. This CliffsNotes was probably more than half the length of the novel. It didn't last long, somebody snagged it up about an hour after I took this. Must be in high demand


Define the Phrase

Well, since nobody's biting, I'm leaving the current phrase up and running until I get some results. Just leave me a comment if you think you have an inkling of what Blunderbuss means (see previous post). Look it up if you must and put this poor word out of its misery so I can post another fun phrase for you to parse.