Category Archives: Books

Minds Like Empty Rooms

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Harper Lee, in a letter to Oprah Winfrey about her love of reading books, talks about working to learn and having things happen on soft pages:

Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it.

And, Oprah, can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer? Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up — some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal.

Visiting Ten Thousand Cities

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Pat Conroy wrote the following parapraph in a Letter to the Editor of The Charleston (WV) Gazette in reaction to learning that two of his books had been banned by the local school board:

The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer inLonesome Dove and had nightmares about slavery in Beloved and walked the streets of Dublin in Ulysses and made up a hundred stories in The Arabian Nights and saw my mother killed by a baseball in A Prayer for Owen Meany. I've been in ten thousand cities and have introduced myself to a hundred thousand strangers in my exuberant reading career, all because I listened to my fabulous English teachers and soaked up every single thing those magnificent men and women had to give. I cherish and praise them and thank them for finding me when I was a boy and presenting me with the precious gift of the English language.

This is why reading is more than fundamental.

Apparently Women Like to Highlight More Than Men

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Amazon has a list of the most highlighted passages on Kindles and all you have to do is look at the list and you realize that highlighting seems to be dominated by women. I know, I know, that's a terribly sexist statement, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Suzanne Collins and Jane Austen appeal much more to women than to men. On a separate note who knew Suzanne Collins was so deep?

Anonymous Art

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Booksculpture
Someone is anonymously leaving paper sculptures in libraries in Scotland:

One day in March, staff at the Scottish Poetry Library came across a wonderful creation, left anonymously on a table in the library. Carved from paper, mounted on a book and with a tag addressed to @byleaveswelive – the library's Twitter account – reading:

It started with your name @byleaveswelive and became a tree.… 
… We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books… a book is so much more than pages full of words.… 
This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas….. a gesture (poetic maybe?)

 

Verbs

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Reading one of Lenslinger's posts I came across some valuable writing advice:

"Ease off the adjectives. Good writing is all about the verb. Forget everything the jackholes with the MFA's and elbow patches have to say. You're a blue collar, Southern writer and they can't teach that shit in schools. Fiction, Memoir, you can write it all – but you CANNOT hold back. Readers will see right through it and you'll be stuck dodgin' lion piss 'til your back finally gives out…"

If I had an ounce of free time I'd also wonder how to score an invite to the next BOOKUP.  Sounds like a lot of fun with some very interesting folks.

Popularity Contest

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Anyone familiar with the publishing business and/or the rubber chicken circuit will be thoroughly unshocked by this revelation:

Mitt Romney boosted sales of his book this spring by asking institutions to buy thousands of copies in exchange for his speeches, according to a document obtained by POLITICO…

The hosts ranged from Claremont McKenna College to the Restaurant Leadership Conference, many of whom are accustomed to paying for high-profile speakers like Romney. Asking that hosts buy books is also a standard feature of book tours. But Romney's total price — $50,000 — was on the high end, and his publisher, according to the document from the book tour — provided on the condition it not be described in detail — asked institutions to pay at least $25,000, and up to the full $50,000 price, in bulk purchases of the book. With a discount of roughly 40 percent, that meant institutions could wind up with more than 3,000 copies of the book — and a person associated with one of his hosts said they still have quite a pile left over.

 

Bradbury’s Prescience

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After reading this piece (h/t to Lex for the pointer), which is an essay that basically says that Ray Bradbury accurately predicted today's America when he wrote Fahrenheit 451, I've decided that I either didn't read the book in high school and depended on Cliff Notes when I wrote my paper, or my memory is in much worse shape than I thought.  I highly recommend reading the essay, even though it'll make you feel guilty about watching TV.  At least until the next episode of Amazing Race comes on.