"You know she beat me at darts at Berkelow and then she beat me at Bronte pool/And then she kissed me like there was nobody else in the room."
–Ed Sheeran, "Galway Girl"
—Margaret Mead
“If you’re not scared a lot you’re not doing very much.”
“Sometimes life is about risking everything for a dream no one can see but you.”
A Society Is Only As Free As Its Most Troublesome Political Dissident Caitlin Johnstone
How Change Happens – With A Million Tiny Steps
“The unknown becomes known, the outcasts come inside, the strange becomes ordinary. You can see changes to the ideas about whose rights matter and what is reasonable and who should decide, if you sit still enough and gather the evidence of transformations that happen by a million tiny steps before they result in a landmark legal decision or an election or some other shift that puts us in a place we’ve never been.” –Literary Hub
Here’s the 2019 Booker Prize shortlist, without Jozef Imrich but including Margaret Atwood and Elif Shafak. Literary Hub
Barn owls reflect moonlight in order to stun their prey The Conversation
It’s pointless to work long hours so why do it? FT
Mary Kay Wilmers, editor of theLRB, having read more than a few reviews of novels, has thoughts about where critics go wrong — and right... Mary Kay Wilmers, editor of the LRB, having read more than a few Cold River reviews
The Lioness in the Tall Grass: Farmer and Poet Laura Brown-Lavoie’s Extraordinary Letter to Children About the Power of Storytellingi
In praise of sentences that pull you in with all their teeth.
BY MARIA POPOVA
“Literature,” Vladimir Nabokov wrote in his insightful meditation on storytelling, “was born not the day when a boy crying wolf, wolf came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels: literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him… Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature.”
Objectionable War and Peace ?
A case at the Bombay High Court against Vernon Gonsalves has been attracting attention, as Justice Sarang Kotwal wondered about the defendant's reading material:
"War and Peace is about a war in another country," Justice Sarang Kotwal said. "Why were you having...[it] at home ? You will have to explain this to the court."Sigh.
But at least the Indian media is having fun with this:Bombay HC asks why War and Peace at home. Truly bizarre, says Jairam Ramesh says India Today, while NDTV reports that, reassuringly (?) After War And Peace Question, Judge Says He Knew Tolstoy Book Was Classic. Meanwhile, at Scroll.in they wonder: If reading 'War and Peace' is illegal, which other books should we not be reading ? and at The Wire Markandey Katju considers other Books Which May Get Me into Trouble.
Manta rays form close friendships, shattering misconceptions National Geographic
Literature is based on politics and eroticism".
Online literature readers in ... China
Xinhua reports that the Number of China's online literature readers hits 455 mln -- up: "by nearly 23 million from December 2018".
And so:
With the advancement of procedure-based development of online literature, China has seen diversified business models for online literature, laying a sound foundation for the sector's sustainable development
In The Telegraph (India) Chandrima S. Bhattacharya profiles "probably the only Tamil person who is translating serious Bengali fiction into English" -- such as Subimal Misra's Wild Animals Prohibited --, and rotameter-maker V. Ramaswamy in 'Translation needs silencing of my mind'
The piece closes:
"Translation is torture. Translation is a solitary and lonely enterprise," says Ramaswamy.
As is life. But both have their rewards.
'The 100 China books you have to read'
Of list-making there is no end, and we now have The SupChina Book List -- apparently: "The 100 China books you have to read, ranked":
There was no criteria except availability in English. Yes, this was more mad than methodicalIt's also limited to one title per author (a list-limitation I have never understood the purpose of).
Still, they get it right with number one, so who am I to complain ?
See the more convenient all-on-one-page list -- with a few of the titles under review at the complete review (the latest one added ... two days ago):
- 93. Serve the People !, by Yan Lianke
- 90. Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, by Eliot Weinberger
- 61. Legends of the Condor Heroes, by Jin Yong
- 55. Ruined City, by Jia Pingwa
- 53. Border Town, by Shen Congwen
- 37. The Man Who Loved China, by Simon Winchester
- 19. The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin
- 1. The Story of the Stone, by Cao Xueqin