For a few more days, you can see my mug over on the StudentNation page at thenation.com. After that, you can still see it on flickr, or right here in the header.
I’m not sure why they picked me exactly, I’m guessing it’s for the book I was holding. Either that or they really like fluorescent lighting, over there at The Nation.
Many more attractive library staff than I are featured with more classical examples of banned and challenged books. Most of the “good ones” were already taken by the time I got in on the project. In fact, another librarian is seen in the series with the very same copy of the Anarchist’s Cookbook, on a table, as if to say “I will begin smashing this bigoted power structure right after I finish ‘Song of Solomon.’”
I halfway thought about posing with a copy of Howard Stern’s autobiography, featured on the ALA list, but I gave my copy away years ago and wasn’t sure I even wanted to be seen with a naked portrait of the King of All Media. Then I discovered that we keep a copy of the Cookbook tucked away on the seventh floor of the Hatcher. So I dashed upstairs and got the presiding Special Collections librarian to snap the photo.
The page I am reading was some kind of recipe for homemade soup. It’s not just a title, there are actual cooking recipes in the Anarchist’s Cookbook, which intrigues me. I probably know most of the homemade weapons instructions already from the Internet anyway.
