Category: words

Inspired by The Spotty Dog Books & Ale in New York’s Hudson Valley, Jason Wuerfel turned to Kickstarter for start-up capital and opened Books and Brews. He made all the furniture by hand and brews all the beer on-site.

“The general consensus seems that this move is designed to punish prisoners purely to show potential voters that the government is tough on crime. But if you look into the science and psychology behind such things, it actually makes little sense.”

“The ban is part of the Incentives and Earned Privileges scheme, which allows prisoners to buy their own basic supplies using funds awarded to them for good behaviour.”

“Thousands are listed for sale on Amazon, all with the same cover design (albeit with different stock photos swapped in) and the same three names (Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, and John McBrewster) listed as the ‘authors.’ Some go for as much as $100.”

“The compound modifier that many readers and critics have settled on to describe Ms. Aboulela’s work is Sudanese-British, which leaves plenty of room for criticism in a world of relentless categorization.” (And then there’s Scotland.)

“Cormac McCarthy [is] a novelist who neglects to contact one-night stands after a passionate night of lovemaking, Tom Wolfe one who sends each conquest a handwritten note on monogrammed paper.”

“Books don’t have to educate or turn people into better human beings – they can also just ask questions. If mine makes some readers realise that dictators aren’t necessarily instantly recognisable as such, then I consider it a success.”

“The unsent angry letter has a venerable tradition. Its purpose is twofold. It serves as a type of emotional catharsis, a way to let it all out without the repercussions of true engagement. And it acts as a strategic catharsis, an exercise in saying what you really think.”

“Reading has the best PR team in the business. Or perhaps it’s just that devoted readers have better access to the language of advocacy and celebration than chain-smokers or, say, power-ballad enthusiasts. Either way, somewhere along the line, an orthodoxy hardened: cigarettes will kill you and Bon Jovi will give you a migraine, but reading – the ideal diet being Shakespeare and 19th-century novels, plus the odd modernist – will make you healthier, stronger, kinder.”

“Eventually, the library says it hopes to make available online all its 82,000 manuscripts. The manuscripts that will be digitised extend from pre-Columbian America to China and Japan in the Far East, passing through all the languages and cultures that have marked the culture of Europe.”