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Saturday, April 23, 2022

Nature Writing Should Be As Unsentimental As Nature Is

 If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good

— Thornton Wilder, born in 1897



A friend in the Texas Hill Country notes a seemingly prescient couplet written in 1969 by Philip Larkin: 

“When the Russian tanks roll westward, what defence for you and me?

Colonel Sloman's Essex Rifles? The Light Horse of L.S.E.?”



The Art Of Buying Books You Haven’t Read To Decorate Your Room

It turns out the bookshelf bulk-buy is standard practice among the rich and famous – and increasingly so, since books have become established as an erudite backdrop for Zoom. - The Guardian



Budapest: You Can’t Build Anything DownAmerican Conservative


 Library sounds’ are some of the most searched-for ‘intoxicating sleep sounds’ available online — a heady combination of ‘page-turning, whispering, writing’ and the crinkling of dust jackets


The love of books — how bound pages have endured and enthralled




Nature Writing Should Be As Unsentimental As Nature Is

"Every writer on nature comes to their own accommodation with the hard facts of wild life. We needn't all look at them too closely, or for too long – but, if we don't look at them at all, I'm not sure what our writing is for." - Aeon


MICROBIOME NEWS:  Got food cravings? What’s living in your gut may be responsible.


THE ONES WE ALREADY HAD WERE QUITE SUFFICIENT:  New reason to fear ticks: Extreme food allergy possible from single bite.



Happiness

The quest for a happy country where everyone looks on the bright side.


How Book Customers Browse For Books

To create a space that is intentional in its gathering of materials meant to provide intellectual and literary stimulation, a space wholly devoted to books, be it a bookstore, a library, or a personal collection, is to understand the fulfillment provided by the activity of rumination and reflection. - Slate

Are You Gaslighting, Correctly?

Although in most cases the word serves to expose implicit power dynamics and level the playing field, it can also be used to do the exact opposite. - The Atlantic


Swahili — How A Little Coastal Dialect Became Africa’s Most Widely Spoken Language

Native to the East African coast, Swahili developed as a lingua franca for various nationalities doing business in busy ports like Zanzibar. Now Swahili is spoken, written, read, and broadcast across a huge swath of the continent by 200 million people, for most of whom it's a second language. - Quartz



When Crosswords Became A Craze (100 Years Ago)

The modern “word-cross” appeared for the first time in print in the December 21, 1913 edition of New York World’s FUN Supplement. Section editor Arthur Wynne, trying to fill the Christmas insert, drew inspiration from his native England. - Zocalo Public Square
WORDS

The Mythologies Of The Writer’s Blank Page

If all works of literature are haunted by the ideal forms of which they are but imperfect instantiations, then the blank book symbolises the refusal to compromise authorial vision. - Aeon
WORDS

Rags-To-Riches Stories Reveal More About America Than Their Authors Think

From the Horatio Alger stories which launched the genre to memoirs by billionaires and even to Fifty Shades of Grey and other "billionaire romance" books (an actual category at Amazon), rags-to-riches narratives demonstrate that financial success is not, in fact, due to hard work alone. - The New York Times Magazine
WORDS

The Carpet Cleaner Who Speaks 24 Languages

By his count, it is actually 37 more languages, with at least 24 he speaks well enough to carry on lengthy conversations. He can read and write in eight alphabets and scripts. He can tell stories in Italian and Finnish and American Sign Language. - Washington Post
WORDS

One Of Those Guys Who Writes SEO Clickbait Articles Fesses Up

"I spend my days writing optimized blog articles that feature short paragraphs and less-sophisticated wording — proven SEO winners — to help my clients appear at the top of search results. ... (My clients') instructions are usually simple: 'See what the top articles are doing, and do it better.'" - MSN (The Boston Globe)
WORDS

Attempts To Ban Books From US Libraries More Than Quadrupled In 2021

The annual report from the American Library Association said that there were 729 challenges to books in school, university, and public libraries in 2021, up from 157 in 2020. Many of those challenges covered more than one book: the total number of individual titles contested was 1,597. - NPR
WORDS

How Languages Figure Out In What Order Words Occur

So, what is grammaticalization? Roughly speaking, it is the series of steps by which collections of individual words that refer to objects and actions gradually mutate into complex systems of grammar, with pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, verb endings, agreement, and so on. - LitHub
WORDS

Charles Darwin’s Notebooks Mysteriously Returned After Years Missing

The 1830s notepads, last seen 22 years ago and formally declared missing in 2020, were left in a pink gift bag on a floor in the Cambridge University Library with a printed note reading "Librarian, Happy Easter, X." - BBC
WORDS

An Illustrator’s Attention To Detail Leads To The Discovery Of A New Species

That discovery came nearly 150 years after Marianne North drew the plant, in Borneo. She was a different kind of illustrator - she used oils, and painted the surroundings. "Not only did Marianne tie down exactly where grew, her paintings also indicated the environmental conditions they grew in." - Atlas Obscura
WORDS

Charlotte Bronte’s Tiny Book Of Poems, Long Lost, Has Now Been Found

She created tiny books, as did her sisters, when she was a young teen, to amuse her family and to help create her imaginary world. This one was last seen at auction in 1916. - The New York Times
WORDS

Who Better To Tell A Story Than A Liar?

"Elena Ferrante's work argues that people lie for a deceptively simple reason: It’s an act of creation, not unlike writing." - The Atlantic
WORDS

The Fight Between Dialect And ‘Proper’ Italian Lies At The Heart Of This Ferrante Adaptation

Linguistic assimilation was meant to unify Italy as a country. "Even by the 50s, though, Italian remained a made-up language, manufactured and largely spoken by the intelligentsia, and associated with politeness and self-control." - LitHub
WORDS

Fabio’s Legacy Is Controversial

A new movie revives the (surprisingly intense) discussion. "Isabelle Popp ... proposed a 'words to Fabio' standard for mainstream romance coverage that boils down to: the sooner he’s mentioned, the less effort or expertise went into the story." - Slate
WORDS

A 19-Year-Old Wins Britain’s National Poetry Competition

Eric Yip is the youngest winner ever - and he's an engineering student. And "Yip, who cites Ocean Vuong as a writer who made him realise he 'had a right' to be heard, speaks Cantonese and Mandarin, but writes poetry in English." - The Guardian (UK)
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