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Franzen on e-readers (and religion)
Critics have pointed to the absence of religion in Franzen’s novels and he explained: “I don’t believe in a God who’s sitting in some undisclosed location at a switchboard receiving and answering prayers.
“To be honest, I’m thinking much more about science than about religion when I’m writing. To me, art itself is a religion.” - Franzen
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Franzen on e-readers (and writing)
“I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change.” - franzen
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/9047981/Jonathan-Franzen-e-books-are-damaging-society.html
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“Alas, dear reader, the term “pleasure” doesn’t capture the mental and physical need for books I once had. Without a book nearby I felt bereft, purposeless, barely human. Once upon a time I lived in a far-flung foreign swamp with an extended family of non-readers. I frightened them one night when I stumbled home drunk and ransacked the house for a lost tome. A nice cousin had cleaned the house and of course she, like most people, would never feel a deep compulsion to read all of Dickens. So my book got cast off or put away or tossed to the silent frogs in the swamp. (Yes, they were silent frogs.) I screamed, “Sid, where are my drugs!” in my best, cackling Nancy Spungen voice and I laughed for being woozily hilarious to myself but could find no rest without a page of my book to send me to sleep. Books were a long-time lover whose steady weight I needed to feel in bed before sleep was possible. It turned out that the swamp heathens had used Bleak House to balance a very wobbly chair.
Books can steady a chair and a soul. The former use is not recommended for Kindle.” - Jonathan Gourlay (here)
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A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.
Charles Peguy (via libraryland)Posted on November 23, 2011 via Libraryland with 121 notes
Source: libraryland
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(via libraryland)
Posted on November 23, 2011 via Never, Never Land with 2,975 notes
Source: wheretimeisneverplanned
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Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.
Aldous Huxley (via kurt-l-fahrenheit)(via libraryland)
Posted on November 22, 2011 via Things: A Tribute. with 1,499 notes
Source: kurt-l-fahrenheit
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Sometimes I see something so moving I know I’m not supposed to linger. See it and leave. If you stay too long, you wear out the wordless shock. Love it and trust it and leave.
Don DeLillo, Underworld (via libraryland)Posted on November 22, 2011 via Libraryland with 444 notes
Source: libraryland
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(via libraryland)
Posted on November 21, 2011 via M E L I with 904 notes
Source: airaannone
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I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.
Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (via libraryland)Posted on November 21, 2011 via Libraryland with 262 notes
Source: libraryland
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i have to be the most boring person in the world. this made me giggle.
(via libraryland)
Posted on November 20, 2011 via CO/STANZA with 12,253 notes
Source: co-stanza
I still remember Book It as the first competition I was actually good at. My parents would have to take my books away to make me go to sleep at night.
In 4th grade I faked an eye exam just so that I could wear reading glasses. I just thought they were cool.
For my thirteenth birthday I asked for The Writer’s Market. I secretly believed I would be a published author before I graduated high school.
After high school I tried to major in something practical, but changed my major to English after one year of practicality. I had started buying the books for the lit classes as well as the books for classes in my major so I figured I’d save money in the end.
After my B.A. I went into STM publishing, but my cubicle was too small and the books too dry. I ran back to academia after 2 years.
In a graduate lit class my professor commented that my writing was “too bookish” and after sulking about it for a bit I realized sulking is fruitless (unless of course you’re Kafka, Woolf, Sexton or Plath, to be brief).
I finally decided to own it. I play books in my head as if they were movies. I remember monumental moments in my life according to which books I was reading at the time. Home is where my books are. I read in bars.
I’m bookish. The end.
This is a blog of all things bookish. Reading suggestions. Bookish art and images. Random thoughts on grammar, language, writing, reading and academia. Coffee. Sometimes tea. General dislike for/fascination with hipsters and their mustaches. And anything else I feel necessary.
