About six months ago I heard an interesting piece on NPR about a book called “Representing Justice” by Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis. The piece described the book as a journey into the personification of Justice – how different cultures envisioned her and how her image, in a sense, acted as a gauge of the public opinion on the court system.
I finally got around to requesting the book via the Meriden Public Library and just picked it up yesterday.
As she pulled it off the shelves, the librarian groaned under the weight of what looked more like an academic text book than a casual summer guilty pleasure. 668 pages of 8×11 fine print interspersed with the occasional figure or artistic rendition of Justice. This was unexpected.
Mike D: “Uh, for how long can I borrow this book?”
Librarian: “Three weeks.”
Mike D: “And, supposing I can’t finish the book in that amount of time… can I renew it even though it’s on inter-library loan?”
Librarian: “yes, just call us in advance and as long as no one else has requested the book you’ll be able to hold onto it.”
As she said this she flipped over the inside cover to stamp the book with its due date only to find that I am the first person to ever take this book out from the library.*
I suspect renewal won’t be a problem.
In other news: while I’ve only read the first few pages of the book, I’m already full invested. It’s great! I’ll let you know what I think as I dig into its somewhat intimidating depths.
*This is not as ridiculous as it sounds, the book was just published last year, so it may be a new library acquisition.