January 2012
27 posts
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“In contemporary religious circles, souls, if they are mentioned at all, tend to...”
– Marilynne Robinson, from her new book When I was a Child I Read Books
[via Wes]
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“Congress is polarized largely because Americans live in communities of...”
– Ryan Lizza, The Obama Memos: How Washington Remade the President : The New Yorker
“Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option....”
– This is an Apple executive’s idea of what a workforce should look like so that the company can make $400,000 of profit per (non-contracted) employee. That’s some robber baron shit. (via madregale)
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“In 1978 Fela married twenty-seven women, many of whom were his dancers,...”
– Wikipedia on Fela Kuti
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“The joy of bourbon drinking is not the pharmacological effect of the C2H5OH on...”
– Walker Percy, from “Bourbon, Neat”
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“For someone who has ceased to believe in his own immortality, life isn’t...”
– Nathaniel Philbrick in Why Read Moby-Dick?
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“When you have just been told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to...”
– P. G. Wodehouse, Summer Lightning (via ayjay)
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Reverting to Type →
My friend Alan Jacobs, the author of The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, has released a new Kindle essay on his history as a reader. This is what I’ll be reading as I fly back to Sweden tomorrow. Or, at least at the bar at Heathrow during my layover.
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“I never wanted you,” David Bazan
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"At the Aquatic Carnival," Les Murray
Two racing boats seen from the harmonic railing of this road bridge quit their wakes, plane above their mirroring shield-forms and bash the river, flat out, their hits batts of appliqué violently spreading, their turnings eiderdown abolishing translucency before the frieze of people, and rolled-over water comes out to the footings of the carnival.
Even up drinking coffee-and-forth in the...
“Most of Louisville is pretty safe (for a city its size, it has never been...”
– Thanks, Wikipedia. (via evanuel3)
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“A planetary visitor might read through the whole of his voluminous works without...”
–
wesleyhill: W. H. Auden on Kierkegaard. This quote came to mind as I was talking with my friend Noah today about how we’ve both survived grad school. A big part of our success (such as it’s been), we agreed, is owing to our making meals and sharing them with friends on a regular basis.
This is...
December 2011
45 posts
Stuff I wrote in 2011
For The New Republic, I reviewed Johanna Adorján’s memoir of her grandparents, Hungarian Jews who survived the Holocaust but committed suicide together in old age.
I published a piece in the Bygone Bureau about playing in the Kubb National Championships in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Kubb is a Swedish lawn sport that’s attracted a weird following in the U.S., particularly in Des Moines,...
“I believe that we ought so to love and trust God in our lives, and in all the...”
– Bonhoeffer again (via ayjay)
“He had no doctorate, for instance, and he seemed to find the idea of PhDs...”
– Geoff Nicholson on J.H. Prynne [via lareviewofbooks]
Mary Karr, "Descending Theology: Christ Human"
Such a short voyage for a god, and you arrived in animal form so as not to scorch us with your glory. Your mask was an infant’s head on a limp stalk, sticky eyes smeared blind, limbs rendered useless in swaddle. You came among beasts as one, came into our care or its lack, came crying as we all do, because the human frame is a crucifix, each skeletos borne a lifetime. Any wanting soul lain...
“Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our...”
– Fred Rogers (via misswallflower)
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“I don’t like this expression “First World problems.” It is false and it is...”
– Teju Cole on the “#firstworldproblems” meme, in a series of tweets compiled by Alexis Madrigal (via risenapes)
The trailer for The Hobbit →
“Fiction is about what it is to be a fucking human being”
– David Foster Wallace
I’m writing MFA application essays and thinking about what writing fiction means to me. This is the best answer I can think of.
“Unbeaten, nobody becomes a bishop.”
– One of the many bizarre Icelandic expressions I learned from my friend, the Icelandic poet and translator Magnus Sigurðsson.
“Christopher Hitchens, by common consent the greatest man of the last century and...”
– Letters: Reflections of the death of Christopher Hitchens | Books | The Guardian (via ayjay)
“As his visit to Britain last year confirmed, Benedict XVI is by no means the...”
– Tom Wright in TLS [via 3QuarksDaily]
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Rape affects almost 20% of US women, study says →
[The BBC via Flipboard]
“The Gospel came to the Greeks and the Greeks turned it into a philosophy. The...”
– The Problem with Pastor as Rock Star (via jmvane, azspot) (via ayjay)
