Too Damaged

The Elements of Style Strunk and White
Great American Short Stories
The Little Black Book of Cocktails
Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
The Other Side of Truth Beverley Naidoo
Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures Mary Baker Eddy
Waiting to Exhale Terry McMillan
Waiting to Fly Ron Naveen
Weight: 8 lbs
Method of Disposal: Recycling

All of these books have been destroyed in some way since we moved here.  I did not throw them out right away, hoping I could salvage them, but I have not been able to.  Elements of Style smells terrible.  I cannot tell you why.  I console myself with the fact that I know I own other copies.  This was the one I got for my high school AP English Class.  It was the first Strunk and White I ever laid hands on.  I was hypnotized by "inflammable" being the actual word for what we commonly think of as "flammable."

I obviously have other copies of 1984, but this one was the coolest by far.  It was purchased from the bargain section of Borders in the 1990s.  The words were spliced with art work in an overly large edition of the classic novel.

I've not read Waiting to Exhale and feel like I should since I saw the movie with Whitney Houston all those years ago.  I was really looking forward to reading about penguins in Waiting to Fly...I could care less about the Scriptures...

1984

1984: 60th Anniversary Edition
1983
Weight: 9.6 oz
Method of Disposal: Gave to my friend, Tracy

I can no longer imagine living in this world without having read 1984. Its language has become community language. Its themes are embedded in a collective memory. We always hear talk of “Big Brother.” In other books, movies, conversations, interviews, everywhere. It is hard to block it out of your mind when you walk into a store with an automated voice that greets you by saying, “You are on camera. Do not steal anything.” Upon looking up, you see several monitors with your image from various angles. The word “Orwellian” occur to you? It has survived for decades and has been passed down and down. It warned/scared people then, and it still does now. The constant war, the censorship, the surveillance, the national identity, the propaganda always seems eerily familiar.

If you have not read this book yet, you should. You will hear it referred to throughout your life no matter what, but if you read it you will understand why.
"Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom."