April 2012
17 posts
“Language! The blood of the soul, sir! Into which our thoughts run, and out of which they grow!”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1859 (via laphamsquarterly)
“This book gives me more information about penguins than I care to have.”
—
In 1944 a children’s book club sent a volume about penguins to a 10-year-old girl, enclosing a card seeking her opinion.
She wrote this.
American diplomat Hugh Gibson called it the finest piece of literary criticism he had ever read.
(via thebookfawn)
March 2012
23 posts
“We don’t get to choose what or whom we love, I want to say. We just don’t get to choose.”
—Bluets, Maggie Nelson
Signed up for Fall Classes today
Seminar in British Literature: Censorship
Seminar in American Literature: American Gothic
Creative Writing Fiction
The Holocaust
Honors Thesis
looking forward to it
moledro
n. a feeling of resonant connection with an author or artist you’ll never meet, who may have lived centuries ago and thousands of miles away but can still get inside your head and leave behind morsels of their experience, like the little piles of stones left by hikers that mark a hidden path through unfamiliar territory.
“Canonized by adults, great writers are often assumed by teenagers to be the ur-adults: wise (as opposed to seeking); sure (as opposed to desperate and lost); transmitters of the most conservative social values (as opposed to those values’ most ardent questioners). Yet the greatest writers are more like teenagers than anyone else—they are people who are obsessed with questioning social structures, consumed with the minutiae of their own emotional, psychological and romantic lives, and the state of their soul. Teenagers shouldn’t read ‘great’ literature because it’s good for them, but because it’s like them. So why isn’t it being marketed to them?”
—
The great Sheila Heti on why teens should venture beyond YA, from last weekend’s Globe and Mail.
Later, she drops this advice for parents everywhere:
If you want your kid to read The Outsider by Camus, hide it in your sock drawer.
(via booksinthekitchen)
“Be careful what you get good at doin’ ’cause you’ll be doin’ it the rest of your life.”
—Gabrielle Hamilton, Blood, Bones & Butter
American Lit vs. British Lit.
I feel like this is a common debate at my university. I prefer American lit. I love the idea that American authors were trying to create an identity of their own and had to become inventive to distinguish themselves from British lit. Transcendentalism, American Romanticism and Dark Romanticism, Southern Gothic… Come on, it’s all awesome.
You’ve got Twain, Dickinson, Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Faulkner, Salinger, Steinbeck, etc.
Which do you prefer?
The Definitive ‘Mad Men’ Reading List →
flavorwire.com
One of the things we love most about Mad Men (and we’re big fans, so it’s hard to pick) is that the show is chock full of significant period details. And few things say more about a character or era than books. From its first season, the impeccably literate series has showcased everything from popular novels of the early ’60s to classic literature. Before the Season 4 premiere, we compiled an extensive list of books featured in, based on, or that inspired Mad Men. Now, we’ve updated it with entries from last season, along with a few more new books related to the show. Happy — or, more realistically, dramatic and depressing but still valuable and gripping — reading!
“True friends are always together in spirit.”
—L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
