Posts tagged reading
It has been said that parents do not surround their kids with books like they used to. Instead, they just buy them a computer and a Xbox and call it a day. That if you physically put endless tomes of literature in front of a curious mind, usually they’ll find their way to reading them.
Might be.
(via good)
![warbyparker:
How Good Books Can Change You
Summer’s here and time for summer reading at the beach, in a hammock or on the porch. Books are great for passing the time on lazy summer afternoons. And according to Ohio State researchers, the books you read from childhood on can also change who you are.
They do this by a process the researchers called experience taking. More than just understanding a character, it’s taking a little of them inside of you and changing yourself in the process. It’s not something that you plan on, it happens spontaneously. Good writing helps, but there’s much more involved.
Read more. [Image: Alexandre Dulaunoy/Flickr] (via theatlantic)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6jplwYH8Y1qcokc4o1_400.jpg)
Summer’s here and time for summer reading at the beach, in a hammock or on the porch. Books are great for passing the time on lazy summer afternoons. And according to Ohio State researchers, the books you read from childhood on can also change who you are.
They do this by a process the researchers called experience taking. More than just understanding a character, it’s taking a little of them inside of you and changing yourself in the process. It’s not something that you plan on, it happens spontaneously. Good writing helps, but there’s much more involved.
Read more. [Image: Alexandre Dulaunoy/Flickr] (via theatlantic)
This summer, I have made it my goal to read both the original and “death-bed” editions of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in their entirety and to study them deeply. I have done this with only one Whitman poem (arguably Whitman’s most famous), “Song of Myself”. This sublime treatise details the power of Nature, of People, of the American Spirt, of Work, of Suffering, of Joy, and of the Self. It is written in plain, honest language and can be read and understood on different levels by all people. “Song of Myself” transcends history, class, and culture, and speaks on a level more universal and primeval than all of these. Although I have casually read many of the other poems in Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself” has been the only one I’ve delved into and from which I’ve gained true understanding.
Last year, as part of a school assignment, I spent about two months with “Song of Myself”, taking it apart and putting it back together in the context of American history and Whitman’s personal narrative, and finally, in the context of my own life and understanding of the world. From that point on, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” became, for me, a kind of sacred text. I gained and continue to gain from “Song of Myself” what people of faith gain from the holy books of their faiths: guidance, comfort, resolve, solace, mystery, visions of the past, present, future. I subscribe to no faith and do not mean to say I have become a disciple of sorts of Walt Whitman. I mean only to say that I know, from personal experience, that written words (even those which are not divinely inspired) have the power to transform and enrich one’s life.
Now I wish to expand that transformative experience. In reading the rest of Walt Whitman’s poems the way I read “Song of Myself”, I hope to know more intimately the language Walt Whitman spoke. I wish to understand the conversations Walt Whitman had with the Universe in its own tongue.
Maltilda: forever and always relevant.
(via strange-voyage)
It’s that time of year again, when citizens of the publishing world from all over the country pack up their tote bags and slip into their clogs for the long trek to the westernmost reaches of Midtown to attend BookExpo America (B.E.A.). Sasha Weiss was there to collect all the latest and greatest news from the Book-world, and you can catch up here: http://nyr.kr/LySByA Also, amongst BookExpo America’s own rock stars were two actual rock stars, Neil Young and Patti Smith, who appeared on Wednesday afternoon for an onstage conversation. Ben Greenman has that story, here: http://nyr.kr/KHsVnp
![book-aesthete:
Prufrock and Other Observations, T.S. Eliot. The Egoist Press, 1917.
First Edition, limited to 500 copies. Some spotting, from the Library of Henry Graham Dakyns, publisher’s wrappers (detached), spine a little browned and rubbed [Gallup A1], 8vo, T
_________________________________________________________10. HysteriaT.S. Eliot “As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: “If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden…” I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4wfve22931qabm59o1_400.jpg)
Prufrock and Other Observations,
T.S. Eliot. The Egoist Press, 1917.First Edition, limited to 500 copies. Some spotting, from the Library of Henry Graham Dakyns, publisher’s wrappers (detached), spine a little browned and rubbed [Gallup A1], 8vo, T
_________________________________________________________
10. Hysteria
T.S. Eliot
“As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: “If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden…” I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.”
Poems, FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUEEstimate:£2,000 - 3,000
€2,500 - 3,700
US$ 3,100 - 4,700
