Goodbye & Goodnight...

After several sleepless and indecisive nights (well, only two really), I've decided to retire my blogspot account and move my BiblioAddict bags elsewhere. This blog has served me well, so it makes me a bit sad to leave, but I think that my new address will better fit my needs. I won't sob or reminisce about the good ole' times but I will say goodbye to each empty room, maybe carve my name into the boards beneath the stairs, and then slip my keys into the mailbox...Now I'm off to my new digs! I really like it, I hope you do too. See you there! And don't forget to bring a bottle of wine!! Click on the new BiblioAddict and meet me there!

A Double-Whammy!

Well it appears I've been hit again, this time by Matt at A Variety of Words. But this one is really fun too! Here are the rules: “You simply have to grab the book nearest to you (no cheating here), turn to page 161, and post the text of the fifth full sentence on the page along with the body of the instruction on your blog. Then you tag 3 people.” Sitting right here, next to my computer is the book I've been trying desperately to finish by the end of the month for the New Notions 5 challenge - The Shakespeare Riots by Nigel Cliff:

He found him in his usual seat in the upper boxes, fixed his eyes on him, gritted his teeth, and asked if he was the writer of the article in his paper.
-- page 161, fifth full sentence

Wow, I think that's pretty good for a random sentence. I'm feeling pretty lazy this Sunday evening, so I'm going to take a page out of Stefanie's book and tell you that if you're reading this post, consider yourself tagged!

A New Neighborhood

I'm thinking about packing up my BiblioAddict bags and heading to a different neighborhood. Head over to this address, look in the closets, scope out the piping and the lighting and tell me what you think...

And a Box of Cookies Please...

Here, have a little laugh on this dreary Friday (at least where I am)...

"Prescribed Reading"...

While God and “militant atheists” are duking it out on the bookshelves (see Anthony Gottlieb’s "Atheists with Attitude" in the New Yorker), Jerome Groopman, author of How Doctors Think, argues in the NY Times article "Prescribed Reading" that for medical students looking to learn about the more existential aspects of their profession - the miracle of birth or the specter of death - the Bible would be a good place to start. He writes:

Each spring, I address these nonscientific dimensions of medicine with 12 freshmen at Harvard College in a seminar called “Insights From Narratives of Illness.” We read about a dozen works, from short stories by Turgenev to Samuel Shem’s Rabelaisian hospital novel “The House of God.” The students are generally surprised to learn how the experience of illness touches every corner of human emotion and behavior. But they are even more surprised to discover that even as they read the assigned books, they are often reading, in the background, one of the world’s oldest books. That book is the Bible. Whether read as revealed truth or as a literary work, the Bible is a sourcebook of human psychology and an enduring inspiration for authors trying to capture the drama and dilemmas of medicine.

I think Groopman’s argument for the Bible as an essential sourcebook to which medical students should turn is interesting but, it seems to me, he makes a better case for all literature as required reading for pre-med students rather than simply the Bible. Groopman writes,

The seminar begins with the Tolstoy novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.”...We move on to Turgenev, Chekhov and Kafka before reaching Richard Selzer’s “Letters to a Young Doctor,” a set of autobiographical essays first published in 1982...Later in the semester we shift to New Age writing, examining the message of books like the surgeon Bernie Siegel’s “Love, Medicine and Miracles” and, new this spring, Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret,” the runaway best seller that asserts you can solve all your problems, including “eradicating disease,” by correctly aligning your thoughts and aspirations...This semester, the class will end with a short novel that can be seen as a modern-day “Ivan Ilyich,” Philip Roth’s “Everyman.”

Such a wide-range of authors and style, seems to prove more than anything that literature, of which the Bible is merely a part, is the means through which, as Groopman says, pre-med students can engage “life’s existential mysteries: the miraculous moment of birth, the jarring exit at death, the struggle to find meaning in suffering.”

I've Been Hit!...

Well it appears that I've been hit by a meme for the very first time by Sam Houston at Book Chase. As Sam said, this does seem like a good way to get to know each other better, so I'm in. As such, I am charged with these rules for the "8 Things Meme":

The rules -
1: Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2: People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3: At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.
4: Don't forget to leave them a comment and tell them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

So, first things first - my 8 things:

1. I'm the oldest of seven children.

2. I'm a trial clerk for the US Tax Court, located in Washington, D.C. (no we're not a division of the IRS and no, I can't give you advice on how to do your taxes. Trust me, you wouldn't want me to).

3. My favorite foods are buffalo wings, macaroni and cheese, and chicken fettuccini with broccoli (conveniently, these are the only three things I'm good at cooking).

4. I was born and raised in St. Louis, MO and, though it will always be home, I have a very strong aversion to ever living in the Midwest again (the reasons are too numerous and convoluted to enumerate. No offense to those of you who live in and love the Midwest).

5. I've never broken or fractured a bone in my body, except for my right middle finger, which I stuck into the crack of large school door when I was in kindergarten; it is now crooked at the first knuckle.

6. My favorite pieces of clothing are old, worn tee-shirts softened by a thousand washes and five sizes too big.

7. My first month in Japan, I ran into a moving car with my bicycle and drank an entire can of flavored Japanese beer in under five seconds before I realized that it wasn't orange soda as I'd originally assumed.

8. One of my most embarrassing moments in high school - and they are many - was when I stood up at a football game and yelled out, quite clearly I must add, "Home Run!"

Well, that's me and now for those who are getting hit:

1. Stefanie over at So Many Books

2. Historia over at BiblioHistoria

3. The Traveller at Around the World in 100 Books

4. Brandon at Bookstorm

5. SPF at Pages Turned

6. Gentle Reader at Shelf Life

7. Eva over at A Striped Armed Chair

...and that's it. Yes, I know the rules called for tagging eight people but everyone else whose blog I read on a regular basis has already been tagged! Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to notify my victims...