Today’s newsletter began with me dreaming about buying one of these library-grade booktrucks and thinking about the “recently returned” shelf at the public library: 

In Elisa Gabbert’s latest collection, she writes about the magic of the “recently returned” shelf at the public library: “I like how it reduced the scope of my options, but without imposing any one person’s taste or agenda upon me, or the generalized taste of the masses suggested by algorithms. The books on that shelf weren’t being marketed to me; they weren’t omnipresent in my social media feeds. They were often old and very often ugly. I came to think of that shelf as an escape from hype. It was negative hype. It was anti-curation.”

At my local Yarborough branch of the Austin Public Library they give their booktrucks funny names:

They also keep their recently returned CDs and DVDs on special shelves, which leads me to fun discoveries like this: 

Browsing the recently returned CDs at the library, I came across the now out-of-print 2018 box set of The Beatles’ “White Album.” I’d heard the remixed tracks back when they were released, but never the Blu-ray Disc with the mix in surround sound. So good! I spent countless hours with the album when I was a teenager, mapping out the instruments and trying to figure out how they made it. I found myself obsessed with the album all over again, reading all the essays in the hardback book, and listening to all the session tracks. (Here’s Rob Sheffield on why the “Esher Demos” are so special.)

Read the whole newsletter: “Recently Returned.”