May 2013
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The Norton Anthology of No Drama
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“Never underestimate a clown with a book.”
– Rawi Hage, from his latest novel Carnival finally available in the US on June 17th. Enter to win a copy on Goodreads.
“Hage’s prose is addictive…[Carnival is] amazing, original, and impolite.” —Montreal Review of Books
“Imagine Camus rewriting Taxi...
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“There’s a lot of myth about the CIA, the Agency, espionage, and so forth....”
– Keith Johnson, Cold War era CIA agent. From Scott C. Johnson’s memoir The Wolf and the Watchman: a Father, a Son, and the CIA.
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“There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice. But I do know...”
– Happy birthday, Adrienne Rich! The 1997 letter with which the beloved poet became the only person to turn down the prestigious National Medal of Arts.
This is the true story of 10 strangers picked to live in a villa, work together and have their lives inscribed to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.
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“I’m an old man/ Made young again/ By the poems I love.”
– Gregory Orr’s “The City of Poetry” (via therumpus)
A sneak peak from Orr’s new collection, River Inside the River, on sale June 3rd.
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Your Momma reads so many books that I bet you were raised in a library.
Perhaps there would have been less drama if F. Scott Fitzgerald had been forged in the crucible of the Smooth Jazz Age.
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URGENT ARCHITECTURE
How can we adequately provide housing when disaster strikes, whether that disaster is weather related, like hurricanes, floods, and droughts, happens in a matter of minutes from an earthquake or tsunami, through a slow process like rising sea levels, or is the result of civil disorder or poverty?
In Urgent Architecture, Bridgette Meinhold showcases 40 successful emergency and long-term housing...
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“This is a book to shake up the world, to make us put down our iPhones and head...”
– Ann Patchett has discovered Nicholas Carr’s Pulitzer Prize finalist The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains and wrote about it on her Parnassus Books blog.
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WHEN DUDE IN PUBLISHING, LIFE IN PUBLISHING, LIFE...
The entire book industry thanks you.
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“Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.”
– Sigmund Freud, born May 6, 1856
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How to Spot a Weak Argument →
Daniel Dennett, Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University and the author of Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, offers a valuable tip on how to quickly find the weak point in an argumentative essay.
The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg peer out from enormous Google Glass, and brood on over the solemn dumping ground.
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May The Fourth Sonnet Be With You
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy? Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend, And being frank she lends to those are free. Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse The bounteous largess given thee to give? Profitless usurer, why dost thou use So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live? For having traffic with thyself alone, Thou of...
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“It may come as a surprise that the best fictional figure to represent the kind...”
– CIA Historian Nicholas Dujmovic on Patrick O’Brian’s famous fictional hero Stephen Maturin in The Telegraph.
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April 2013
47 posts
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The mind? A collection of computerlike information processes, which happen to take place in carbon-based rather than silicon-based hardware.
The self? Simply a “center of narrative gravity,” a convenient fiction that allows us to integrate various neuronal data streams.
The New York Times talks about life, the universe, and everything while sailing with Daniel Dennett, “ruthless slayer...
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Each from Different Heights
That time I thought I was in love and calmly said so was not much different from the time I was truly in love and slept poorly and spoke out loud to the wall and discovered the hidden genius of my hands And the times I felt less in love, less than someone, were, to be honest, not so different either. Each was ridiculous in its own way and each was tender, yes, sometimes even the false is tender. I...
`and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice `without metadata or user comments?’
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“Check your shelf before you wreck yourself!”
– a public service announcement for the reading public
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WATCH LIVE: Google Hangout with Mary Roach, author... →
Mary Roach, “America’s funniest science writer (Washington Post),” is in a Google Hangout right now talking about her newest book, GULP: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal.
[UPDATE: The live conversation has ended, but the YouTube link above can still be used to find the archived discussion.]
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“The notion that we can or should run a government like a business is [a] goofy...”
– The Centrist Manifesto
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rosemarysbaby13:
Irvine Welsh author of Trainspotting, Porno, Filth… favorited one of my tweets last night and today he responded to another to say I flipped my fucking shit is a total understatement!!!! guys Irvine Welsh acknowledged my existence!! one of my favorite authors! the man gave us Begbie, Renton, Spud, and Sick Boy for crying out loud!!
Say hello to Irvine Welsh on Twitter...
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The Environmental Lesson To Be Learned from the...
The global economic meltdown was brought on by three fundamental causes:
1) private individuals and firms acting recklessly
2) a regulatory structure that was insufficient to protect the broader system from irresponsible private actions
3) all of us—experts and observers alike—grossly underestimating the interconnectedness of the global financial system and the degree to which a...
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Good. Now here's what poetry can do.
Imagine yourself a caterpillar. There’s an awful shrug and, suddenly, You’re beautiful for as long as you live.
—the final lines of Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry by Stephen Dunn
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Yum and Yuck: On the Subjectivity of Taste →
Mary Roach applies to be an apprentice taster on the UC Davis Olive Oil Taste Panel. She doesn’t make the cut but learns a lot about the subjectivity of taste in the process.
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