Category: words

“The problem is that young children have terrible taste and enjoy garbage. Another problem, which compounds the first problem, is that they want to hear the same books hundreds of times in a row. So for all the joys that storytime can offer, it frequently entails a kind of dismal self-abnegation that’s too excruciating even to describe as tedium.”

“Surveying this at the end of a project provides a fascinating vision of the evolution of a book – though I invariably find that it’s a catalogue of complaints (‘horrible day,’ ‘appalling day,’ ‘realised that most of what I wrote last week was rubbish’), relieved only rarely by moments of insight and sweaty euphoria: ‘Think I’m getting there at last, thank Christ!'”

But the Asian news site Rocket News 24 reports that disgruntled readers have criticised the library’s decision, with one critic of the plan explaining that “Japanese people hold books in high regard, almost as sacred.”

“If you think Amazon is a great place to self-publish your book, I may have a question or two in mind, but still, it’s fine with me, and none of my business anyhow. My only quarrel with Amazon is when it comes to how they market books and how they use their success in marketing to control not only bookselling, but book publication: what we write and what we read.”

Seattle tops the list. “Not so surprising, really. Several factors help boost our reading status, including our highly educated population, bookish community that includes fantastic public libraries and local bookstores that support authors and events, and long, dark months of dreary weather that lend themselves to, well, reading. It also helps that we have one of the world’s most famous book fans in town.”

“The library said last month it was bringing in an independent firm to review security protocols and that before any items were reported missing it was already working with an outside consultant to “organize, catalogue, inventory, and recommend processes to allow better security and control over” its more than 1.3 million Print Department holdings.”

“After analysing the winning novels of six literary awards from the past 15 years, the British-American novelist Nicola Griffith concluded that books written by men about men or boys were far more successful than those written by either sex and offering the point of view of women or girls.”

“Unlike the videos of beheadings and burnings, which are made primarily for foreign consumption, poetry provides a window onto the movement talking to itself. It is in verse that militants most clearly articulate the fantasy life of jihad.”

“The stroke Tranströmer suffered in 1990 paralyzed him on one side, stealing most of his speech. … Over the afternoon I ask questions that Monica translates into Swedish, and then he responds, to which she seeks greater clarification, and on it goes. In between, Tranströmer steers her questions and extrapolations with his face, his few words, gestures, and the tone of his voice. They touch and regard each other constantly throughout this process. It is hard to tell, watching the two of them, who is the conductor, and who is the symphony.”