this is what i did today

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Sun, 09 Dec 2012 21:21:12 -0500

literaryjukebox: The useless days will add up to something....

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:01:16 -0500

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.

Cheryl Strayed in Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Song: “We Will Become Silhouettes” by The Postal Service

iTunes :: Amazon :: Back to Brain Pickings

russian-rose: let’s all wear berets and go to Paris, yes?

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 20:51:49 -0500

russian-rose:

let’s all wear berets and go to Paris, yes?

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Mon, 03 Dec 2012 10:34:25 -0500

housingworksbookstore: 10 Best Books of 2012 - NYTimes.com

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 19:59:41 -0500

housingworksbookstore:

10 Best Books of 2012 - NYTimes.com

explore-blog: Jennifer Egan’s favorite books, including Jane...

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 12:06:51 -0500

explore-blog:

Jennifer Egan’s favorite books, including Jane Austen’s Emma, Don DeLillo’s Underworld, and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

wordpainting: where-im-bound: shakespeare & company,...

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 10:00:33 -0500

wordpainting:

where-im-bound:

shakespeare & company, paris—

i could spend forever here, its a perfect bookstore. full of little corners and old exposed wood beam ceilings, and theres a piano upstairs in the library, and a wall full of fragments of poetry and love. its just wonderful.

Of all the bookstores in the world, this is the one I want to visit most.

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Fri, 16 Nov 2012 12:16:12 -0500

aseaofquotes: Laura Dave, The First Husband

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:56:33 -0500

aseaofquotes:

Laura Dave, The First Husband

ilovereadingandwriting: book bath (via Books, Books, Books…)

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:55:24 -0500

ilovereadingandwriting:

book bath (via Books, Books, Books…)

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Fri, 02 Nov 2012 20:55:54 -0400

The New Yorker: Rainy-Day Reading from the Archive

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 17:28:44 -0400

The New Yorker: Rainy-Day Reading from the Archive:

newyorker:

Up and down the East Coast, offices are closing ahead of Hurricane Sandy, and millions of workers are preparing to pretend to work from home. If you’re one of them, let us distract you with this rainy-day reading list. A few of these articles are hurricane-related; others just perfect for…

That night in Dallas, Ray put on a blatant display of what a story could do in terms of artifice,...

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 17:28:08 -0400

That night in Dallas, Ray put on a blatant display of what a story could do in terms of artifice, concision, strong feeling, shapeliness, high and surprising dramatics. The story was definitely about something, and you could follow it easily—it was about what two people did in adversity which changed their lives. But here was no ponderous naturalism. Nothing extra. There were barely the rudiments of realism. This was highly stylized, artistic writing with life, not art, as its subject.

- Richard Ford on Raymond Carver

“Good Raymond,” The New Yorker, October 1998

Ray read the story in near-dark conditions, hugely hunched over a glaring little podium lamp,...

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 17:24:58 -0400

Ray read the story in near-dark conditions, hugely hunched over a glaring little podium lamp, constantly fiddling with his big glasses, clearing his throat, sipping water, beetling down at the pages of his book as if he’d never really thought of reading this story out loud and wasn’t finding it easy. His voice was typically hushed, seemingly unpracticed, halting almost to the point of being annoying. But the effect of voice and story upon the listener was of actual life being unscrolled in a form so distilled, so intense, so chosen, so affecting in its urgencies as to leave you breathless and limp when he was finished. It was a startling experience—wondrous in all ways. And one learned, from the story, many things: Life was this way—yes, we already knew that. But this life, these otherwise unnoticeable people’s suitability for literary expression seemed new. One also felt that a consequence of the story was seemingly to intensify life, even dignify it, and to locate in it shadowed corners and niches that needed revealing so that we readers could practice life better ourselves.

- Richard Ford on Raymond Carver

“Good Raymond,” The New Yorker, October 1998

aseaofquotes: Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the...

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 10:45:30 -0400

aseaofquotes:

Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

runreadrepeat: Hundreds of books, window seat, huge window. I’m...

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 17:11:40 -0400

runreadrepeat:

Hundreds of books, window seat, huge window. I’m in love.

explore-blog: Truth from David Foster Wallace

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 11:02:31 -0400

explore-blog:

Truth from David Foster Wallace

literaryjukebox: Thomas Wolfe warned in the title of America’s...

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 13:19:12 -0400

literaryjukebox:

Thomas Wolfe warned in the title of America’s great novel that ‘You Can’t Go Home Again.’ I enjoyed the book but I never agreed with the title. I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.

Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant. Parents, siblings, and neighbors, are mysterious apparitions, who come, go, and do strange unfathomable things in and around the child, the region’s only enfranchised citizen.
[…]
We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.

Maya Angelou in Letter to My Daughter

Song: “That Home” by Cinematic Orchestra

iTunes :: Amazon

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Tue, 09 Oct 2012 13:16:33 -0400

How to be an Explorer of the World, by Keri Smith

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 16:34:01 -0400

How to be an Explorer of the World, by Keri Smith