The Puget News

Thanks to Boing Boing, I discovered this wonderful site entitled “Hot Library Smut” - it’s basically a page with gorgeous views of the interiors of libraries from around the world and a small collection of links to some other resources on the topic.

Now, coming upon this post as you are, unawares, I feel I ought to clarify the title (which was alternately going to be sex libris) straight away by telling you what this post is not, in fact, about. By “library smut” I am in no way referring to the photo books on native peoples, or the illustrated health manuals, or any of the other volumes which, in your childhood, you lurked about the library aisle to find with the sole purpose of sneaking guilty glances at naked bodies. Nor am I referring to the “risqué” novels by Miller, Cleland, Réage, or Lawrence you leafed impatiently through as a teenager. No. What I’m talking about here is the full-frontal objectification of the library itself. Oh yeah.

This all got me thinking that this might be a fun series for “The Puget News”. If you have photos of any libraries or particularly evocative pictures involving books, please send them to me. I’d love to have photos and descriptions of your own personal book collections, descriptions of how you organize them, and how you came to assemble it. Are most of your books read already? Did you acquire them during any particular period of your life? Do you have a hard time letting them go or do you read and pass them on? Let me know. You can email me at “eric at thepugetnews.com” or respond in the comments field below. If I like your photos and description, I’ll post them to this blog under my new “library porn” section. I also need a graphic for my header on this blog so if you have something that would look good and you’ll give me permission to use it, I’d like to see it. It should be fun!

I’ll kick things off with some photos I have from an outing at the Seattle Public Library a couple months ago. I’ll also post later with photos of my books in my new home once they’re all unpacked and sitting where they’re supposed to be.

Enjoy!