Anthropologie Otter Country by Miriam Darlington – review Otters are easy to love but difficult to know. Most of the love is mediated by those with more time, patience and skill than us; it is through books and film that the otter has squirmed its way into our hearts. Miriam Darlington's initial seduction, like that of my own, came from Gavin Maxwell's Ring of Bright Water and Henry Williamson's Tarka the Otter. Darlington's childhood crush was deep and affecting, but removed. But the risk is that the love remains distant, sentimental and unobtainable. Darlington has the advantage of being a poet who is wise to the overwhelming onslaught of too many metaphors. Her initial stumbling grows into skill. All this requires there to be otters, and the otter's lot has not been a happy one. Darlington helps at a post-mortem examination of a road casualty ("You might want to take off your jumper," she is told. During her search, you can feel Darlington change. There is a turning point. There are many encounters with otters in this beguiling book.
I waste so much time Books: The Whole Horror The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 By Saul Friedlander (HarperCollins, 870 pp., $39.95) With the publication of The Years of Extermination, Saul Friedlander adds to his already well-established reputation as one of the world's pre-eminent historians of the Holocaust and of its place in modern European, German, and Jewish history. Friedlander's evidence comes from official documents, but also from numerous eyewitnesses whose personal chronicles are, in his words, "like lightning flashes that illuminate parts of the landscape." The Years of Extermination rests on a career of scholarship nearly half a century long. Then there appeared the first installment of Friedlander's grand culminating project. The first volume of Nazi Germany and the Jews included another dimension that comes even more to the fore in its successor volume, The Years of Extermination. An integrated history requires balance. This is a crucial point. upon the Bolsheviks as redeeming Messiahs.
Brain Pickings 20 Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone Makes I’ve edited a monthly magazine for more than six years, and it’s a job that’s come with more frustration than reward. If there’s one thing I am grateful for — and it sure isn’t the pay — it’s that my work has allowed endless time to hone my craft to Louis Skolnick levels of grammar geekery. As someone who slings red ink for a living, let me tell you: grammar is an ultra-micro component in the larger picture; it lies somewhere in the final steps of the editing trail; and as such it’s an overrated quasi-irrelevancy in the creative process, perpetuated into importance primarily by bitter nerds who accumulate tweed jackets and crippling inferiority complexes. But experience has also taught me that readers, for better or worse, will approach your work with a jaundiced eye and an itch to judge. While your grammar shouldn’t be a reflection of your creative powers or writing abilities, let’s face it — it usually is. Who and Whom This one opens a big can of worms. Which and That Lay and Lie Moot Nor
Bug - random nonsense 5 days a week The Cool Hunter Paulo Coelho's attack on Ulysses insults readers Samuel Johnson, in one of his great aperçus, responded to some pettifogging critic with the phrase: "A fly may sting a horse, but the horse will still be a horse, and the fly no more than a fly." That sentence sprang to mind the minute I read that Paolo Coelho had decided to take James Joyce to task. In an interview in Folha de S Paolo (one wonders if he chose that outlet for any particular reason) the self-proclaimed "literature wizard" contends: "Today, writers want to impress other writers." He then names the culprit: "One of the books that caused great harm was James Joyce's Ulysses, which is pure style. There is nothing there. Coelho is, of course, entitled to his dumb opinion, just as I am entitled to think Coelho's work is a nauseous broth of egomania and snake-oil mysticism with slightly less intellect, empathy and verbal dexterity than the week-old camembert I threw out yesterday. What are the criticisms? The real slander is to the reader, or rather, to readers.
Dispatch Rider words go the distance - November 25 - (Source: cherrylisa) 5 notes link - August 29 - (Source: lowresthoughts) 525 notes link - August 21 - Attila Sassy Opium Dreams 1909 (Source: kvetchlandia) 104 notes link - August 18 - Vulpes Vulpes by Robert Farkas (via nicolelacriola) 21 notes link - August 17 - Painting by Jarek Puczel (via nicolelacriola) 1,377 notes link (Source: oldhollywood, via bouquetofclematis) 3,645 notes link (Source: nicolelacriola, via apornstarsfuneral) 310 notes link (Source: mounfield, via musingofarose) 17,634 notes link (Source: cornerofperversion, via rubydeville-deactivated20130117) 5,680 notes link (Source: thedailypozitive, via phalange) 6,698 notes link (via phalange) 724 notes link Joe Fig, Jackson Pollock 1951, 2002 (Source: travisleegrant, via phalange) 52 notes link - August 7 - (Source: inspiro) 79 notes link (via thefloorsheardeverything) 3,004 notes link God I loved the movie splash as a kid (Source: , via pisceanunicorns) 148 notes link older
Collecting Pieces June62012 Just maybe Maybe… I’ll wake up tommorow when my alarm goes off instead of pressing the snooze button 8 million times. Maybe…I’ll start going for walks, take vitamins, and eat the correct serving amount of fruits and vegatables. Maybe…I’ll start reading more. Maybe…I’ll cook more. Maybe…I’ll study more. And maybe…Just maybe…I’ll fall in love again. Today… Today…I am going to read. This…this is today June12012 Walking Hmmk..so Ive been reading some stuff from this guy Henry david Thoreau.
No Thanks, Mr Franzen, I Like My Novels Difficult Let's give praise to Jonathan Franzen. Not only does he write bestselling novels, he also manages to get on everybody's nerves with a few carefully reckless comments. Recently he inadvertently became a Twitter trend. A decade ago, Franzen was already an entertaining, intelligent loudmouth, but he was also less famous than we, the apparently uneducated, pop culture-obsessed public, have made him now. If you've never read William Gaddis, you're not alone. Difficulty itself is a difficult thing. Franzen has given Gaddis a try. Fearless Franzen ends up advocating a different sort of writer's mentality: a compact between the writer and the reader, with the writer providing words out of which the reader creates a pleasurable experience. Trouble begins here. These sound like fighting words. Have you read The Recognitions? There were quotations in Latin, Spanish, Hungarian, and six other languages to be rappelled across. It's not surprising that Franzen found it a challenging read. Nope.
True American (Drinking Game) Rules