Reader's Digestion
SteveMR
and some few to be chewed and digested.
--Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
_Essays_ [1625], "Of Studies"
Swallow all your learning in the morning, but digest
it in company in the evenings.
--Philip Dormer Stanhope (1694-1773),
The mind is like the stomach. It is not how much you
put into it that counts, but how much it digests.
--Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945)
--
Steve
The Sanity Inspector
He read insanely, by the hundreds, the thousands, the ten
thousands, yet he had no desire to be bookish; no one could describe
this mad assault upon print as scholarly; a ravening appetite in him
demanded that he read everything that had ever been written about
human experience. He read no more from pleasure: the thought that
other books were waiting for him tore at his heart forever. He
pictured himself as tearing the entrails from a book as from a fowl.
-- Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River
--
bruce
The dignified don't even enter in the game.
--The Jam
Dolores
stretch your own." -Charles Scribner, Jr.
(...that is, if you can stomach it...)
---Dolores, thinking of all the books she couldn't digest...
> Steve
tmw
grazing.
~G.K. Chesterton
tmw
____________________________________________
SteveMR200
<4uesbt0cnc0jl433n...@4ax.com>:
If we want to be "strong in the Lord, and in the
power of his might", one of the first things we
have to do is to read and to take in and to
masticate thoroughly this Book [Bible].
--Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981)
_The Christian Soldier_ [1977]
--
Steve
~~seadancer~~
-Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts (1931) "Myself"
---Sea
SteveMR200
<hgnq4v$srn$1...@news.datemas.de>:
>"People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading".
>-Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts (1931) "Myself"
>---Sea
I have sometimes dreamt that when the day of
Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers
and statesmen come to receive their rewards--their
crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly
upon imperishable marble--the Almighty will turn to
Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when
He sees us coming with our books under our arms,
"Look, these need no reward. We have nothing
to give them. They have loved reading."
--Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
_The Second Common Reader_ [1932]
--
Steve
~~seadancer~~
> On Mon, 21 Dec 2009 07:36:45 -0500, ~~seadancer~~ wrote
>> -Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts (1931) "Myself"
>> ---Sea
>
> I have sometimes dreamt that when the day of
> Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers
> and statesmen come to receive their rewards--their
> crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly
> upon imperishable marble--the Almighty will turn to
> Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when
> He sees us coming with our books under our arms,
> "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing
> to give them. They have loved reading."
> --Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
> _The Second Common Reader_ [1932]
I like that one, Steve.
"Books are the plane and the train and the road. They are the
destination, and the journey. They are home."
-Anna Quindlen (1998)
---Sea
http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/7646.Glens_Falls_NY_Online_Book_Discussion_Group
SteveMR200
<hgp9b8$bag$1...@news.albasani.net>:
>"Books are the plane and the train and the road. They are the
>destination, and the journey. They are home."
>-Anna Quindlen (1998)
>---Sea
I discovered its worth [super-slow reading] years
ago, in the infamous Changi prisoner-of-war camp in
Singapore. I was 19, an artillery sergeant, when
the city fell to the Japanese on February 15, 1942.
Waiting with other Australian POWs to be marched
off, I tried to decide what I should take in the
single pack permitted. The only limit was what a
weary man could carry the 17 miles to Changi. Our
officer thoughtfully suggested, "Each man should
find room for a book."
So I stuffed into my pack a copy of Lin Yutang's
_The Importance of Living_--a title of almost
macabre appropriateness--and began a reading habit
that was to keep me sane for the next three and
a half years.
Previously, if I had been really interested in a
book, I would race from page to page, eager to know
what came next. Now, I decided, I had to become a
miser with words and stretch every sentence like a
poor man spending his last dollar.
During the first few days at Changi, I took Lin
Yutang out of my pack three or four times, just
gazing at the cover, the binding, and the
illustrated inside cover.
Finally, as the sun went down one evening, I walked
out into the prison yard, sat down on a pile of wood
and, under the glare of prison lights, slowly opened
the book to the title page and frontispiece.
I spent three sessions on the preface, then two
whole evenings on the contents pages--three and a
half pages of chapter headings with fascinating
subtitles--before I even reached page one. Night
after night I sat there with my treasure.
Fellow prisoners argued, played cards and walked
about all around me. I was oblivious, I disappeared
so completely into my book that sometimes my closest
friends thought I had gone bonkers.
I had started with the practical object of making my
book last. But by the end of the second week, still
only on page ten, I began to realize how much I was
getting from super-slow reading itself.
Sometimes just a particular phrase caught my
attention, sometimes a sentence. I would read it
slowly, analyze it, read it again--perhaps changing
down into an even lower gear--and then sit for 20
minutes thinking about it before moving on.
I was like a pianist studying a piece of music,
phrase by phrase, rehearsing it, trying to discover
and recreate exactly what the composer was trying to
convey.
It is difficult to do justice to the intensity
of the relationship. When Lin Yutang wrote of
preparations for a tea party, I could see the
charcoal fire, hear the tinkle of tiny teacups,
almost taste the delicate flavor of the tea.
I read myself in so thoroughly that it became
not a mass of words but a living experience.
It took me something like two months to read Lin
Yutang's book. By then, his philosophy on tea-
making had become my philosophy on reading: You
can do it fast, but it's a whole lot better done
slowly. I held to the method, even after we had
persuaded the Japanese to give us several hundred
books from the famous Raffles library in Singapore.
The realization dawned on me that, although my body
was captive, my mind was free to roam the world.
--Sydney Piddington
(In the Reader's Digest _The Art of Living [1980],
"The Special Joys of Super-Slow Reading")
--
Steve
Lucas Ramieux
"SteveMR200" <Steve...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1qg1j593mt5trhj4l...@4ax.com...
Literature is the luxury of the dominant class, feeding on ideas foreign to
the vast majority�How is it possible on the one hand, for example, to behave
as if nothing on earth were more important than literature, and on the other
hand fail to see that wherever one looks, people are struggling against
hunger and will necessarily consider that the most important thing is what
they will earn at the end of the month? Because this is where he (the
writer) is confronted with a new paradox: while all he wanted was to write
for those who were hungry, he now discovers that it is only those who have
plenty to eat who have the leisure to take notice of his existence.
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, qt Stig Dagerman, The writer�s paradox, AFR
Review, 9 January 2009--
________________________________________
Lucas Ramieux - "Live purposefully, memento mori"
SteveMR200
<Jt9Ym.64029$ze1....@news-server.bigpond.net.au>:
>(the writer) is confronted with a new paradox: while all he wanted
>was to write for those who were hungry, he now discovers that it is
>only those who have plenty to eat who have the leisure to take
>notice of his existence.
>
>Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, qt Stig Dagerman, The writer's paradox,
>AFR Review, 9 January 2009--
>
>________________________________________
>Lucas Ramieux
Biblioholics would rather read than eat, would
rather buy books than buy clothes. George Gissing
frequently laid out money for books that, even in
his own mind, would have been more prudently spent
on the necessities of life.
Standing outside a bookseller's shop once, "torn by
conflict of intellectual desire and bodily need,"
his stomach rising up in borborygmic revolt, the
classic battle raged in his mind. Books or food?
A "plate of meat and vegetables" and no book or a
"dinner of bread and butter" and a book? Satisfying
base, corporal needs or feeding the immortal mind?
He "paced the pavement, fingering the coppers in
[his] pocket, eyeing the stall, two appetites at
combat within [him]," and he did what any of us
would have done if placed in his shoes: he bought
the book.
--Tom Raabe
_Biblioholism: The Literary Addiction_ [2001], Chapter 2
--
Steve
libreria
> He "paced the pavement, fingering the coppers in
> [his] pocket, eyeing the stall, two appetites at
> combat within [him]," and he did what any of us
> would have done if placed in his shoes: he bought
> the book.
> --Tom Raabe
> _Biblioholism: The Literary Addiction_ [2001], Chapter 2
_________________________
What wild desires, what restless torments seize
The hapless man who feels the book-disease!
~ John Ferriar 1761-1815, The Bibliomania (1809)
--
//libreria
Pics of AL
http://aussieladiesofaq.blogspot.com
______________________________
SteveMR200
<syAYm.64405$ze1....@news-server.bigpond.net.au>:
>On Wed, 23 Dec 2009 04:05:04 -0800, SteveMR200 wrote in message:
><7m14j5d8jamrcbk3q...@4ax.com>:
>
>> He "paced the pavement, fingering the coppers in
>> [his] pocket, eyeing the stall, two appetites at
>> combat within [him]," and he did what any of us
>> would have done if placed in his shoes: he bought
>> the book.
>> --Tom Raabe
>> _Biblioholism: The Literary Addiction_ [2001], Chapter 2
>_________________________
>
>What wild desires, what restless torments seize
>The hapless man who feels the book-disease!
>~ John Ferriar 1761-1815, The Bibliomania (1809)
Most people don't understand what a library does for
me and I've given up trying to explain it to them.
All I know is that I feel energized when I'm in one.
My pulse quickens when I walk through the stacks.
I feel like an explorer surveying an uncharted
shore. Lost worlds are here waiting to be
discovered. Ancient worlds; once glorious, now
crumbled. Future worlds; no more substantial than
the numbers or ideas or words of those who dream
them. Mythical worlds. Worlds of limitless
dimensions.
Libraries are medieval forests masking opportunity
and danger; every aisle is a path, every catalog
reference a clue to the location of the Holy Grail.
It is here that I become privy to the sacred songs
of kings and the ballads of rogues. Here are tales
of life-and-death struggles of other wayfarers as
they battle personal dragons and woo fair maidens.
Walking down this hallway, I am a knight entering
the forest in search of truth.
--"Grant Austin"
(The narrator of Jack Cavanaugh's
_A Hideous Beauty_ [2007], Chapter 5)
--
Steve
David C Kifer
> Libraries are medieval forests masking opportunity
> and danger; every aisle is a path, every catalog
> reference a clue to the location of the Holy Grail.
> --"Grant Austin"
> (The narrator of Jack Cavanaugh's
> _A Hideous Beauty_ [2007], Chapter 5)
There is a reason why one of the rooms containing my library has a sign
over the door that I "borrowed" from the military back in the day:
A triangle painted red, with one black-letter word on each edge:
"MINES MINES MINES"
--
Dave
"Tam multi libri, tam breve tempus!"
(Et brevis pecunia.) [Et breve spatium.]
SteveMR200
<1qg1j593mt5trhj4l...@4ax.com>:
> "The Special Joys of Super-Slow Reading")
book in order to draw from it nourishment for the
soul, advise you to stop reading as soon as you
feel moved.
And indeed the most beautiful image you can imagine
of the act of reading is the woman Corot painted as
she sits dreaming or meditating, holding a book in
which one finger marks the page where she broke off.
--Jean Guitton (1901-1999)
_A Student's Guide to Intellectual Work_ [1951],
"Reading As Self-enrichment"
Click here to view Corot's "Interrupted Reader" painting:
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/81512?search_no=1&index=4
--
Steve
TheSanityInspector
> On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:05:00 -0800, SteveMR200 wrote in message:
> <1qg1j593mt5trhj4l...@4ax.com>:
"Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them."
-- Lemony Snicket, Horseradish
SteveMR200
<7m14j5d8jamrcbk3q...@4ax.com>:
>Biblioholics would rather read than eat, would
>rather buy books than buy clothes. George Gissing
>frequently laid out money for books that, even in
>his own mind, would have been more prudently spent
>on the necessities of life.
>
>Standing outside a bookseller's shop once, "torn by
>conflict of intellectual desire and bodily need,"
>his stomach rising up in borborygmic revolt, the
>classic battle raged in his mind. Books or food?
>A "plate of meat and vegetables" and no book or a
>"dinner of bread and butter" and a book? Satisfying
>base, corporal needs or feeding the immortal mind?
>
>He "paced the pavement, fingering the coppers in
>[his] pocket, eyeing the stall, two appetites at
>combat within [him]," and he did what any of us
>would have done if placed in his shoes: he bought
>the book.
>
> --Tom Raabe
> _Biblioholism: The Literary Addiction_ [2001], Chapter 2
furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate!
To spend several days in a friend's house and hunger
for something to read, while you are treading on
costly carpets, sitting upon luxurious chairs and
sleeping upon down, is as if one were bribing your
body for the sake of cheating your mind.
--Horace Mann (1796-1859)
_The Duty of Owning Books_ [1859]
--
Steve
SteveMR200
jet plane or road repair jackhammer, but the ubiquitous
radio and TV. Unplug it and put it where it belongs, in
its place in the servant's quarters, not on the throne
of your home and your heart.
Furthermore, TV and movies are almost totally
controlled by the most aggressively secularistic,
biased elite group of opinion molders in the
history of mankind.
Why deliberately eat their junk food? Just because it's
sugar coated? Go back to real food! Two real foods
that TV is replacing are books and conversation.
--Peter Kreeft (1937- )
_Making Choices: Practical Wisdom For Everyday
Moral Decisions_ [1990], "Simplicity"
--
Steve
SteveMR200
<dke6talu85v1caqom...@4ax.com>:
>>
>
>Religious writers who have discussed how to read a
>book in order to draw from it nourishment for the
>soul, advise you to stop reading as soon as you
>feel moved.
>
>And indeed the most beautiful image you can imagine
>of the act of reading is the woman Corot painted as
>she sits dreaming or meditating, holding a book in
>which one finger marks the page where she broke off.
>
> --Jean Guitton (1901-1999)
> _A Student's Guide to Intellectual Work_ [1951],
> "Reading As Self-enrichment"
>
>Click here to view Corot's "Interrupted Reader" painting:
>http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/81512?search_no=1&index=4
up with a plan to make reading easy. We called it
litzak--Muzak for literature--and the idea was to boil
down great books to a sentence each.
"Moby-Dick," for instance, was reduced to: "A whale
of a tale about the one that got away."
We knew it was ridiculous. That was the intent. How
could a single sentence capture the essence of a
book? But as it turns out, the joke was on us.
Blinkist, a website and an app, now summarizes
nonfiction titles in the form of quick takes labeled
"blinks." The end result is more than one sentence,
but not by much. [...]
In the current issue of Harper's, a critic laments
the difficulty of reviewing books when the practice
is increasingly under assault.
And yet, reviews, too, have been used as shortcuts.
Plenty of readers skip the book in favor of a more
succinct critique. This misses the point of reviewing
as much as a 15-minute summary misses the point
of reading.
Why do we read books? Why do we give them the time
they require? The answer is different for all of us, but as
for me, I want to be surprised. I want to see the world
reframed, to be confronted, challenged, not affirmed--
the very opposite of Blinkist and its collection of useful
data points.
--David L. Ulin
_Los Angeles Times_ [April 11, 2019],
"Speed-Reading With Blinkist Isn't
Reading At All"
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-ulin-blinkist-reading-book-summary-20190411-story.html
--
Steve
SteveMR200
<na7v8etfivr6pcg41...@4ax.com>:
intellectual malnutrition.
--William Arthur Ward (1921-1994)
_Thoughts Of A Christian Optimist_ [1968]
--
Steve