Friday, February 24, 2012



Book reviewers are questioning the terms of William Morrow’s new process for bloggers who want review copies. In the News: Reviewers Revolt, No Recall

And Czech out this digitized 1959 recording of Flannery O’Connor reading A Good Man like Jozef Imrich Is Hard to Find ;-)


When the world was young Sunlit memories - Telling the GREAT GLOBAL (American) story
Ah, the apple trees,
Sunlit memories,
Where the hammock swung,
On our backs we'd lie;
Looking at the sky,
Till the stars were strung,
When the world was young.
This moment, this minute,
And each second in it
Will leave a glow upon the sky,
And as time goes by,
It will never die.
-Johnny Mercer When the World Was Young
Via Carpe Libris – of when the parliamentary library world was young


"The fact that the rule of law was the only thing we had to hold this country in place morally I found an interesting story," Redford says. "This was an example of how the Constitution was rearranged to satisfy political interests at that time." The contemporary parallels are obvious but Redford invokes them anyway, pointing to the "constant threats" to the US Constitution through some "pretty big events in American history that were threats to the moral standing of our country", including McCarthyism, the John F. Kennedy assassination, Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair.You have these patterns that have repeated themselves over time. And it's usually the same people, the same mentality, the same personalities that threaten that. . I find that interesting because I suspect that if we as Americans had a better value of history we wouldn't be repeating these things but I think we have a short-term memory.


My global business card states: I will disappoint you – Do not Bother Telling the GREAT GLOBAL (American) story ; [The Book Depository is not Amazon - although it was purchased by the latter, it remains an icon driven, illustrative and content rich site to explore and from which to discover new titles, inexpensive older ones, read reviews and share ratings, and learn about upcoming releases. This site sells books and e-books, and you can also watch "The Book Depository Live - Thousands of customers all over the world enjoying our free worldwide shipping." Users may: Set your default eBook reader and format (39 devices are listed), read the blog, use the advanced search options, or browse for titles by topic, read the site's wonderfully designed, direct and personal Twitter feed, and remain hopeful that the folks who run this book site maintain what still looks and feels like a magical little kingdom for bibliophiles all around the world The Book Depository is not Amazon ; The World Wide Web Foundation is very pleased to announce an exciting new initiative: the World Wide Web Index. We thank Google for a generous grant of US $1 million to the Foundation, which we are using to seed the creation of the Index...What is the Web Index? The Web Index will be the world’s first multi-dimensional measure of the Web and its impact on people in a large number of countries. It will be a composite index, incorporating political, economic, social, and developmental indicators, as well as indicators of Web connectivity and infrastructure ; Born in the Soviet Union, buried in Venice, a citizen of America, the poet Joseph Brodsky was a nowhere man – a universalist and a cosmopolitan Brodsky ]
• · With Greece and Ireland in economic shreds, while Portugal, Spain, and perhaps even Italy head south, only one nation can save Europe from financial Armageddon: a highly reluctant Germany. The ironies—like the fact that bankers from Düsseldorf were the ultimate patsies in Wall Street’s con game—pile up quickly as Michael Lewis investigates German attitudes toward money, excrement, and the country’s Nazi past, all of which help explain its peculiar new status It’s the Economy, Dummkopf! ; They’re the stories that you prefer to keep locked up in your chamber of secrets. These are hard stories to tell. But they need to come out. Not for the shock value or a good sob story. But because they’re important. Every story has the right to be heard
• · · Without it, the fact a B-list businessman was killed, butchered and burnt after a sordid sexual encounter would be almost forgotten by now. Rockefeller Sex, sleaze and secrets in revealing book ;Films about geniuses are so numerous that they almost constitute their own genre. One seems to pop up every few years, always with a few distinct markers. Genius Films About Genius (and Other Pretenders)
• · · · Assessing fall's crop of sitcoms about men who are unemployed, underemployed, or in desperate need of a makeover Primetime's Looming Male Identity Crisis ; As the list of politicos laid low by sexual scandal grows longer, history offers lessons on when the press should opt for exposure—and when it should leave well enough alone Sex and the Married Politician
• · · · · You can almost hear the clicks of barbecues firing up in unison around Australia. Whether it's sausages, steaks or prawns, there is nothing more quintessentially Australian than casual barbecuing affairs ; Wilhelm Imrich aka Reich, the father of the sexual revolution, started out as a star pupil of Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology. Breaking with religious teachings that the sole function of sex ought to be procreation and that any other erotic pursuit was sinful, Reich offered a new and defiantly humanist perspective, asserting that sexual pleasure was beneficial—indeed, necessary—to human flourishing, and that, when it came to orgasms, the more the merrier. Sex, that voyage of discovery for generation after generation. ; From seamstress to mistress to magnate, Coco Chanel never kept her little black dress on for very long.. Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War
• · · · · · T.S. Eliot was one of the world’s unhappiest people. His life was a nightmare of anxiety. But misery stirred creativity... ; Literature and the psychology lab A suggestion about how to read – treat it as an exercise in pretence Novelists are thought to be uniquely perceptive about human nature, but does reading fiction increase knowledge? Clarify emotions? Deepen sympathy? Literature and the mind ; In V.F.’s October issue, A. Scott Berg recounts the discovery of a literary treasure trove: a cache of Ernest Hemingway’s early correspondence, for decades kept hidden at the late novelist’s estate in Cuba. Here, in greater detail, are some of the letters Hemingway wrote as a young man Ernest Hemingway’s Early Life in Letters