Wiblingen Monastery Library, Ulm, Germany
The Wiblingen Monastery was founded in 1093, and remodeled in the Baroque style in the 18th century. Over the library is an inscription: “In quo omnes thesauri sapientiae et scientiae” (In which are stored all treasures of knowledge and science”).
Author Ann Patchett on her new bookstore in Nashville, TN:
“I have no interest in retail; I have no interest in opening a bookstore,” Ms. Patchett said, serenely sipping tea during a recent interview at her spacious pink brick house here. “But I also have no interest in living in a city without a bookstore”.
Ms. Patchett said that she is counting on her store to drive home a sharp, tough-love message to book lovers: buy books at independent stores, or the stores will go away.
“This is not a showroom, this is not where you come in to scan your barcode,” she said. “If you like this thing, it’s your responsibility to keep this thing alive.”
from the ny times: Little, Brown Pulls Novel, Citing Plagiarism
By JULIE BOSMAN
4:30 p.m. | Updated Little, Brown & Company has pulled a mystery novel from the shelves after passages in the book were found to have been plagiarized from “a variety of classic and contemporary spy novels,” the publisher said on Tuesday. The book, “Assassin of Secrets,” a debut novel by Q. R. Markham, was released last week by Mulholland Books, an imprint of Little, Brown. Continue reading
I just finished reading a gaggle* of memoirs from survivors of Ireland’s Industrial Schools in the 1950’s. It is flooring how much I don’t know. Will I live long enough to understand everything that has happened in the history of the world before I die? If I don’t, will I have lived a failed life?
*at least five geese
1. If you work hard, and become successful, it does not necessarily mean you are successful because you worked hard, just as if you are tall with long hair it doesn’t mean you would be a midget if you were bald.
2. “Fortune” is a word for having a lot of money and for having a lot of luck, but that does not mean the word has two definitions.
3. Money is like a child—rarely unaccompanied. When it disappears, look to those who were supposed to be keeping an eye on it while you were at the grocery store. You might also look for someone who has a lot of extra children sitting around, with long, suspicious explanations for how they got there.
4. People who say money doesn’t matter are like people who say cake doesn’t matter—it’s probably because they’ve already had a few slices.
5. There may not be a reason to share your cake. It is, after all, yours. You probably baked it yourself, in an oven of your own construction with ingredients you harvested yourself. It may be possible to keep your entire cake while explaining to any nearby hungry people just how reasonable you are.
6. Nobody wants to fall into a safety net, because it means the structure in which they’ve been living is in a state of collapse and they have no choice but to tumble downwards. However, it beats the alternative.
7. Someone feeling wronged is like someone feeling thirsty. Don’t tell them they aren’t. Sit with them and have a drink.
8. Don’t ask yourself if something is fair. Ask someone else—a stranger in the street, for example.
9. People gathering in the streets feeling wronged tend to be loud, as it is difficult to make oneself heard on the other side of an impressive edifice.
10. It is not always the job of people shouting outside impressive buildings to solve problems. It is often the job of the people inside, who have paper, pens, desks, and an impressive view.
11. Historically, a story about people inside impressive buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them turns out to be a story with an unhappy ending.
12. If you have a large crowd shouting outside your building, there might not be room for a safety net if you’re the one tumbling down when it collapses.
13. 99 percent is a very large percentage. For instance, easily 99 percent of people want a roof over their heads, food on their tables, and the occasional slice of cake for dessert. Surely an arrangement can be made with that niggling 1 percent who disagree.
via the awl
No book has given me more profoundly wicked nightmares than “We Need to Talk About Kevin”.
Checking out reading material in a Paris bookshop last year
So, according to a new Gallup poll, a record-high 81% of Americans hate the American Government (i.e. hate America) – hate that has been building up over the past ten years (i.e. since W Bush). 82% are against Congress specifically, and 49% of Americans believe the U.S. Government is “an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens” (now imagine living in the rest of the world!). Republicans hate the government more — 92% compared to 65% of Democrats (but they sure love that monthly social security check!). I for one, am glad to know my low self-esteem is patriotic! Continue reading
Look at this cover photo of Michele Bachmann. Really look at it. It’s creepy, right? Notice how she’s ever-so-slightly wall-eyed… just enough to give her that million-light-year stare. See how she’s got the Katherine Harris boob-thrust down cold. See how her lid lift surgery gives her that *perky* expression (you know, the kind you want to remove with a hand-sander). Note her trashy French Manicure on her clenched talons (her shoes are probably making her head hurt). Then there’s the devil-tranced, cult stare, like she’s getting secret messages from God through her eyebrows. It looks like her head is about to fly off like a top and start spinning and spewing green vomit (no one could top THAT in a debate!).
I mean, do you think the publisher chose this cover photo to make her look crazy? Because I think it makes her look damaged and unprofessional, consumptive and unstable. Unless the title is “Six Xanax, Five Prozac, Four Klonipin, Three Valium, Two Massengil, One Woman. My Story”, it’s just freaking weird. We’ve all seen her glassy, Stepford stare as she waits for a questioner to finish before providing another pre-cooked doctrinal nugget, saying the worst possible things on any given issue….but this is her book cover photo. These are things that – historically – authors have self-curated and staged to portray their assets to their fullest advantage. I had sort of agreed with the argument that the psycho-eyes Newsweek photo was at least in some part cheesy and misogynistic. Now I call bullshit on the wingnut uproar over that photo. Look at this book cover again. She chose this.
Paula Prentiss showing her new perky boobs as a newly roboticized wife in The Stepford Wives, 1977
