September 2009
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Cleave Books UK →
All the following resources available: GRoL include The Wind in the Willows, King Solomon’s Mines and Pride & Prejudice - I love finding on-line reading for those days when there is no work to be done at work. Reading a book looks bad when your boss walks in; reading on-line is not so obvious.
TRoL = Teacher Resources on Line = TRoL SCoL = Specialist Calculators on Line = SCoL 80 of...
More Reasons to read Stuffed & Starved
One of my favorite passages in Stuffed and Starved comes in the conclusion, when Patel takes a moment to skewer the fantasy of good consumerism:
The honey trap of ethical consumerism is to think that the only means of communication we have with producers is through the market, and that the only way we can take collective action is to persuade everyone else to shop like us. It alters our...
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“Half the world is malnourished, the other half obese - both symptoms of the...”
– Now on my Must Read list.
Powell’s Books - Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System by Raj Patel
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August 2009
36 posts
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“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses...”
– Helen Keller (via nihilnoetia) (via libraryland)
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"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut
I had forgotten this story! Along with The Marching Morons (link to text), this is one of the best short stories ever written. Thanks, Libraryland!
libraryland:
neighborhoodthreat:
Note: This is the first time I’ve ever read Vonnegut. Figured it’s a good start. Maybe I’ll read Slaughterhouse 5 or something now.
“THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal...
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“Japan lives in the future; it has lived there for a century. Hot-wired by...”
– William Gibson on how Japan became “the favored default setting for so many cyberpunk writers”. (via dailymeh)
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“My darling,
Let us begin this letter, this prelude to an encounter, formally,...”
– Finish reading here
Juzka’s ravings - Love letter from Neil Gaiman
Thanks to LittleWolfStar, whose love for all things Gaiman pointed me at this excellent story.
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“We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don’t...”
– John Waters (via liquidnight) (via wingsandfins)
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“Well, I’ve worried some about, you know, why write books … why are we teaching...”
– Kurt Vonnegut (via alonzopt) (via nerdgasms) (via woody) (via hammerito) (via iguessthatscool) (via whatthevandalstook) (via libraries) (via libraryland)
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Here are the rules: Don't take too long to think...
libraryland:
twowaymonologue:
booklover:
1-1984 by George Orwell
2-The Magus by John Fowles
3-Stories by Edgar Allen Poe
4-Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
5-Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevski
6-Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin
7-One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
8-Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
9-Fellowship of The Ring by J.R.R.Tolkien
10-Amber...
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In Praise of Shadows (1933)
dailymeh:
In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki is a lovely little meditation on traditional Japanese aesthetics and how it differs from Western aesthetics. It was not, as I had hoped, about a mood I’ve been interested in for some time, mono no aware, my favorite translation of which is “beauty as an awareness of the transience of all things, and a gentle sadness at their passing”, though...
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“The ever expanding reach of copyright has removed more and more art and ideas...”
– This is so true. And wrong. Homage is Homage, people - get out of your small mind set!
Lewis Hyde, The Gift (via thebronzemedal) (via libraryland)
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Are women's magazines really that bad?
rachelhills:
I have this memory of being in my late teens, sitting under the foliage at university reading an article in the then latest edition of Cosmo. It was about how to pick up guys at parties, and I planned to put it to use that Friday night.
I don’t remember much of what it said - something about circulating around the room to spot and catch the eye of your target? - but that’s not the...
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Seven Blunders of the World
peetypassion:
1. Wealth without work 2. Pleasure without conscience 3. Knowledge without character 4. Commerce without morality 5. Science without humanity 6. Worship without sacrifice 7. Politics without principle —Mahatma Gandhi
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“Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable...”
– Vladimir Nabokov (via liquidnight) (via libraryland)
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The BBC believes most people will have read only 6...
Reblog. Bold the ones you have read, total and post.
01 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - 02 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - 03 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - 04 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - 05 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - 06 The Bible - 07 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - 08 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - 09 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman...
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July 2009
1 post
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“[Gloria Stewart] trembled. She cried. She looked at Daddy Beckett. She sobbed...”
– James Ellroy, My Dark Places. The book is about his mother’s unsolved murder, the way he ran from her death through booze and drugs and terrible living, and his eventual return to the case to try to solve it. This quotation, on page 309 of the hardcover, had a peculiar force in context that it... 