Hyde Park

The Seminary Co-op: the bookstore of my heart.

It's been a few years since I last visited Chicago. I'm in town for a wedding, and for some reason the weather decided to be perfect. I know that there are others who will understand that although Chicago is a large city, full of museums and restaurants and interesting neighborhoods, there is something that always pulls me back into the Hyde Park vortex. Could it be the books?

Random northside café. Evil RSI-aggravating mugs are a strike against them.

When I went to the Seminary Co-op, which hasn't yet moved, I was shocked to see that they didn't have Jen Fleissner's book on the shelf, and they only had one of Ian Hacking's books on statistics in the history of statistics section. These are, indeed, outrageous omissions (Women, Compulsion, Modernity is a Chicago title, for FSM's sake!), but it was wonderful to be in a place where I could have such expectations in the first place. And it's easy to imagine that they were probably gone because someone in the neighborhood had recently bought them.

Powell's. <3>

The Regenstein Library, plus
the new robot-operated underground stacks.

This is so entirely unacceptable. From the "sometimes I am ashamed of my alma mater" files.

The L.A. Times blogs about graffitti in the Regenstein Library.

Full Flickr set here.

(Via @UChicagoPress.)

Another one for the "my alma mater sometimes embarrasses me" files: Twitterature.

Admittedly, I am primarily interested in Twitter because of its potential pedagogical applications.

Update: The Chronicle has more.

(Via HUP. Yes, Twitter.)