Tag Archives: Books
Books are made of win, cont’d: “A momentary stay against confusion”
Clay Shirky says: [A] book is a “momentary stay against confusion.” This is something quoted approvingly by Nick Carr, the great scholar of digital confusion. The reading experience is so much more valuable now than it was ten years ago … Continue reading
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Books are made of win, cont’d: Chip Kidd gets skanky
…and gives a hilarious and enlightening talk on the creation of some of his iconic book covers: My job was to ask this question: “What do the stories look like?” [...] We bring stories to the public. The stories can … Continue reading
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Books are made of win, cont’d: Information needs hard copies
Jonathan Franzen makes the case for books over e-books: My problem with e-book readers is that one minute I’m reading some trashy website, the next minute I’m reading Jane Austen — on the same screen. I think, for serious readers, … Continue reading
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Miscellany: Blume, Hitchens, Lamarr, Tyson; The West Wing as science fiction; groupthink and solitude; what e-books can’t do; and the end of SOPA (for now)
Time for another grab-bag of links that caught my eye: 1) An NPR interview with the incomparable Judy Blume, who talks about censorship, how to inspire kids to read (and how not to), the folly of labeling authors and books … Continue reading
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Books are made of win, cont’d: A bookstore comes alive
A wonderful video shot at the Toronto bookstore Type: Somehow, I doubt that a similar stop-motion video of a horde of uniform gray Kindles would have been quite as charming. More book awesomeness here. (via Abe Books)
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Everything is better with cats
Oh, excellent! AbeBooks identifies a pressing problem, and a solution: Here at AbeBooks Headquarters, we occasionally step away from our bubbling beakers to read books. And we’ve all noticed a disturbing trend throughout classic literature. Many of the so-called “classics” … Continue reading
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“The future has arrived and it’s all about dreaming of the past”: Have we reached the end of cultural history?
You must read this fascinating cultural analysis from Kurt Andersen, who argues that even as we experience breathtaking advances in science, technology, and communications, the American cultural landscape “has been stuck on repeat, consuming the past instead of creating the … Continue reading
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“For learning, against usefulness”: The Phantom Tollbooth and the purpose of education
My mind has been on education a lot these days, as we take our fifth-grade daughter to visit middle school after middle school, analyzing and comparing notes, trying to decide which ones to apply to next year. It’s funny — … Continue reading
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The case for optimism, cont’d: “A forward movement we can’t easily see”
I’ve been rereading Doris Lessing’s Prisons We Choose to Live Inside, a small collection of essays adapted from her lectures; some excerpts below. Inspiring humanism and amazing prescience. Highly recommended. Sometimes it is hard to see anything good and hopeful … Continue reading
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The case for optimism, cont’d: “A blaze of color, a stylized lightning bolt, a burning heart”
I’ve just finished Supergods, Grant Morrison’s meditation on the history and meaning of comic book superheroes (and his own not-insignificant role in shaping it), and it’s quite a read: at times off-puttingly self-regarding, occasionally full of shit, but very often … Continue reading
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