Sunday, October 21, 2018

We want to be hated, not pitied ... Where Do Writers Get Their Ideas?

“It takes a while to learn what you don’t need.”
Wisdom via Strbske Pleso Gitka a Janka


Štrbské Pleso 

The Rack Railway line, 182 Tatranská Štrba, at Štrbské Pleso is one of only two rack railways in Slovakia. The electric trains run on steep gradients and have cogwheels which mesh with a toothed rack-rail which runs between the running rails.
The current engine at Štrbské Pleso has been in operation for 48 years and the Slovak Railway Company is now planning to re-new it. Five new carriages and one multifunctional locomotive will replace the current three carriages in three years. They will be equipped with air-conditioning, WiFi connection and USB ports. The carriages will also be barrier-free and for sportsmen there will be space to store bikes, skis and snowboards and there will also be space for prams. Via Jozko Slivka Tatra Triangle
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High Tatras, Slovakia



'It'll haunt you forever': Traditional owners warn climbers of perils entering FNQ's 'Bermuda Triangle'

Why we like being scared.  More here

A strange first job. After Oxford,Anthony Powell joined perhaps the only publishing house run by someone who hated books and considered authors “a natural enemy "

       They're down to three finalists for the 2018 Jan Michalski Prize, the CHF 50,000 prize for: "a work of world literature [...] of fiction or non fiction, irrespective of the language in which it is written". 
       Works by Olga Tokarczuk -- coming in English in a year or so --, Yuval Noah Harari, and Jean Rolin make up the final three. 

 

Paul McCartney Can’t Stop Making People Happy


Now 76, with a new album, the pop legend continues to delight and comfort the world with his music.




  What is the point of a bookish life? It's not to become knowledgeable or clever, and certainly not to become learned. It is to become Wiser


Ideas, not technology, drive the biggest historical 
changes 

Why we like being scared.  More here


If you had only one day to eat in New York City, where should you go?  (New Yorker)  More useful than almost any other restaurant advice you will get.



Having Written Plays About Philosophy, Physics, And Pink Floyd, Tom Stoppard Takes On The Nature Of Consciousness


Alexis Soloski talks to the playwright and director Jack O'Brien about the challenges of his latest script, The Hard Problem. … Read More












Where Do Writers Get Their Ideas?


The Man Booker Prize short-listed authors explain, at least a little, how their brains work

The first sip is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy,” Jack Kerouac wrote of tea in his 1958 novel The Dharma Bums. Late one night that year, he walked five miles with an enormous tape recorder strapped to his back to keep the woman he loved from taking her own life



 Iranian director Bahman Farmanara's Tale of the Sea reached ... “So many of the big important poets, writers and










Who Started The Biggest Library Fire In Modern History?

The Joys Of A Midnight Book Launch Don’t Fade In Adulthood

Well, at least not when the book is a new one from Haruki Murakami. There are contests, and there are ghost cats and there’s pasta. “When during a quiz at the Three Lives launch party a woman won a large tote bag containing a bag of pasta and a jar of tomato sauce, she got the biggest cheers of the night.”

Borges on Turning Trauma, Misfortune, and Humiliation into Raw Material for Art

“All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”

Borges on Turning Trauma, Misfortune, and Humiliation into Raw Material for Art
“Forget your personal tragedy,” Ernest Hemingway exhorted his dear friend F. Scott Fitzgerald in a tough-love letter of advice“Good writers always come back. Always.” It is an insight as true of writers as it is of all artists and of human beings in general, as true of personal tragedy as it is of collective tragedy — something Toni Morrison articulated in her mobilizing manifesto for the writer’s task in troubled times: “There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

Betty Botter bought some butter
But she said the butter’s bitter
If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter
But a bit of better butter will make my batter better
So ‘twas better Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
He would chuck, he would, as much as he could, and chuck as much wood
As a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood




John Ibrahim's best-selling memoir 'true' but hard to prove, court hears

Tom Domican claims the memoir of the Kings Cross identity implies he is a hitman, supplier of heroin and a violent criminal. He wants the book pulped.