Bookmobile

As I waited in interminable traffic, I did what I often do to pass the time: I pleasantly contemplated sudden death. Specifically I wondered what it would be like if my car were suddenly swallowed by a yawning sinkhole, sucking its contents to the abyss. If this entombed vehicle were not discovered for many eons, what would a curious archeologist think of its contents as she catalogued them as part of her dig?

This scientist of the future would no doubt be struck by all kinds of odd things in the car. Chief among them would be its many toys: trolls in assorted festive colors; Mike and Sully, the gay couple from the film Monsters, Inc.; a Magna Doodle. It is possible she would also discover a tin with some leftover mints, though I may well have eaten those in an attempt to prolong my unexpectedly subterranean life. Most intriguing, though, would be the car's vast collection of books, a veritable library of Alexandria on wheels. Here are a few titles she would note as she composed her list of "tomes interred as grave goods":

• Vikings: A Very Short Introduction
  
• The Little Mermaid, Disney picture book version
  
• Summerland (Michael Chabon)
  
• You Can Be a Ballerina!
  
• Mr Brown Can Moo. Can You? (Dr. Seuss; see here for a suggestion of possible homoeroticism and pedophilia in this underappreciated author)
  
• The Botany of Desire (Michael Pollan)
  
• Vampire Plagues: Mexico, 1850 (Sebastian Rook)
  
• Dead Lovers: Erotic Bonds and the Study of Premodern Europe (page proofs)
  
• The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
  
• The Spectral Jew (Steve Kruger)
  
• That's Not My Tractor!
  
• The Subject of Violence (Peter Haidu)
  

Look for reviews of several of these books to appear here in the weeks ahead. [And don't get your hopes up that You Can Be a Ballerina! will be among them because -- astoundingly, and unlike most other medievalists -- such has never been my desire].