Rating the Gould Library's Least Necessary Books
Compact shelving ain't gonna cut it forever. Every month of every year, our own Gould Library receives more books, and sooner or later, we'll have to admit to ourselves that there are some we really just don't need that much. What stays? What goes? Use this helpful index to start trimming the fat.
The films of Charles Bronson – Jerry Vermilye, 1980.
- First Impression: A comprehensive (to 1980) index of the films of actor Charles Bronson (Death Wish I through V). Why, we are not told.
- Second glance: Devotes seven pages to Bronson's 1971's spaghetti western Red Sun, in which Japanese samurai Kudora (Toshiro Mifune) must join forces with gun-slinging vigilante Link (Bronson).
- Final verdict: The suggested lineage of martial artist-cowboy team-up films prior to Shanghai Noon gives one the excuse to coin the phrase "East Meets West-ern."
- Rating: 4.5
Probabilistic Methods in Combinatorics – Paul Erdos and Joel Spencer, 1974.
- First impression: I hate and fear advanced mathematics and am not qualified to evaluate the usefulness of this book. Goofy title, though.
- Second glance: "B(n,p) is the distribution of the number of successes in n independent trials, with the probability of success p. So Un has distribution B(n, 1/2)." And I feel nothing.
- Final Verdict: I like my probabilistic methods as much as the next guy, but combinatorics? Cut me some slack, Jack.
- Rating: 2
Lou Grant: The Making of TV's Top Newspaper Drama – Douglass K. Daniel, 1996.
- First Impression: 200+ pages, hardcover, about a Mary Tyler Moore Show spin-off. Published fourteen years after the show's cancellation.
- Second glance: While on air, the series apparently tackled complex, relevant issues and is rumored to have been cancelled in part because of lead actor Ed Asner's criticism of U.S. intervention in El Salvador.
- Final Verdict: Unlikely to be used by any Carleton student for a legitimate purpose anytime in the discernable future, but far more likely to be used than a 200-page book about Rhoda would have been.
- Rating: 3
Late Quaternary Sea-Level Correlation and Applications – D.B. Scott, P.A. Pirazzoli, and C.A. Honing.
- First impression: Is there something with marine geologists and initials?
- Second glance: I did not really look through this book.
- Final verdict: The Quaternary period ended roughly 1.8-1.6 million years ago – GET OVER IT.
- Rating: .5
400 Losers – Winton M. Ahlstrom and Robert J. Havighurst, 1971.
- First impression: From the title, I can only assume this is about the class of 2010 . . . HOLD ON! . . . I went there, man.
- Second glance: It's actually about post WWII adolescent male delinquency.
- Final verdict: '10 can EAT IT.
- Rating: 0
This review was originally published in the Carl and has been reprinted with permission from the editors and the author, Greg Hunter. The Carl is the Carletonian's biweekly culture and arts supplement.