I’m reading Bertrand Russell’s The ABC of Relativity (well, listening to it, in an audiobook read by Derek Jacoby FTW), and for one, it’s helping me understand relativity a tiny, tiny bit, which is huge. Relatively. But I also just heard Jacoby pronounce this tidbit, which delighted me: If people were to learn to conceive …
Tag Archive: books
May 12 2013
It’s Okay to Put Down the Book
Tim Parks, blogging at NYRB, writes a thought-provoking piece positing that there may be something to the idea that a reader may opt not to finish a novel when they are, in essence, quite full and satisfied — and that authors should accept and embrace this. It’s a fascinating idea considering how rarely endings of …
Apr 08 2013
Squatting for Caro
I was curious as to whether Robert Caro, he of the voluminous Lyndon Johnson biographies, might be on Twitter. Imagine my amusement when I found this: To be clear: This account will almost certainly never be put to use. It has been reserved, however, “just in case.” — Robert Caro (@RobertACaro) May 8, 2012 The …
Mar 25 2013
The Agent of Change, the Barbarian
Richard Nash at the Virginia Quarterly Review has a long piece that is ostensibly about the business of literature, but really gets at the heart of what the book means to civilization. I just loved it. The two bits I’ll highlight have to do with the book’s resilience as a piece of both technology and …
Mar 10 2013
Self-Flagellation over Books Not Read
I was just complaining on Twitter that I feel genuine and physiologically-palpable anxiety over the idea that there are so many Important Books that I’ve never gotten to, and likely never will. (Read more about my struggles with particular aspects of the Western Canon here.) Then Bill Boulden (@Spruke) pointed me to this piece at NPR …
Mar 08 2013
Hey Gandalf, Where Are the Freaking Eagles? [Updated]
Sean Crist confronts a problem I didn’t even realize existed, but now sticks in one’s literary craw: Why didn’t the eagles just fly Frodo to Mordor, and skip all that unpleasant trudging about through a medieval hellscape and struggling with a demented jewelry addict bent on his demise? Essentially, because Tolkien just kind of screwed …
Feb 22 2013
Kindle: The Socially Progressive E-reader
It looks like a previous Kindle ad, but with a twist at the end that pleases the bleeding heart liberal in me.
Feb 19 2013
Jack White Turns into John McCain
Before his time, Jack White shakes his fists at the clouds. Via The Verge: “Getting out of your chair at home to experience something in the real world has started to become a rare occurrence,” White says. “Why go to a book store and get a real book? You can just download it. Why talk …
Feb 17 2013
Me vs. the Western Canon
As part of a recent initiative of mine to read a bunch of the foundational classics that I’d so far missed, I finally got around to reading Machiavelli’s The Prince, maybe about a year ago. Though it’s something that has had a tremendous impact on political thought for centuries, I had somehow managed not to …
Jan 06 2013
“Create something small, humble, with no braggadocio.”
Considering the recurring subjects of e-readers and gadgets on this blog, it seems appropriate to mark the passing of Michael Cronan, the guy who gave the Kindle its name. From the Times: When Amazon prepared to introduce its first electronic reader in 2007, it turned to Mr. Cronan, who envisioned imagery reflecting the reading experience …
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