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.?”
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
"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.
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
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
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
