rob

Books speak in the middle of the night just as the river speaks, quietly and reluctantly, or perhaps the reluctance stems from our own weariness or our own somnambulism and our own dreams, even though we are or believe ourselves to be wide awake. Our contribution is minimal, or so we think, we have the feeling of understanding almost... more »

Books speak in the middle of the night just as the river speaks, quietly and reluctantly, or perhaps the reluctance stems from our own weariness or our own somnambulism and our own dreams, even though we are or believe ourselves to be wide awake. Our contribution is minimal, or so we think, we have the feeling of understanding almost effortlessly and w/out needing to pay much attention, the words slip by gently or indolently, and w/out the obstacle of the alert reader, or of vehemence, they are absorbed passively, as if they were a gift...
Javier Marias
Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life...
Fernando Pessoa
The Book of Disquiet

last profile update: Thursday: 4 December 2009 6:40pm
last excerpt update: Thursday: 3 July 2008 4:30pm
recent activity: breaking in a new laptop...ick

WARNING: Evil Green Enabler Here...Approach with Caution

The Enabler's Song
The Enabler went down to Shelfari
She was lookin' for a soul to steal
She was in a bind 'cause she was way behind
And she was willing to make a deal

When she came across this young man
Sittin' round and readin' Dickens real fast
And the Enabler jumped up on a hickory stump
And said, "Dude, let me tell you what..."

"I bet you didn't know it
But I'm a reader too
And if you'd care to take a dare
I'll make a bet with you..."

"Now, you read pretty good writers, boy
But give the Enabler her due
I bet a book of gold against your soul
That I read better stuff than you..."

Just Finished: Sunstone...Octavio Paz, House of Leaves...Mark Z. Danielewski, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman...Laurence Sterne, Strange Things Happen: A Life w/ The Police, Polo, and Pygmies...Stewart Copeland
Currently Reading: Demons...Fyodor Dostoevsky, Pevear-Volokhonski, trans.,The Magic Mountain...Thomas Mann, David Copperfield...Himself, The Complete Saki...H.H. Munro, Jane Eyre...Charlotte Bronte, The Book of Disquiet...Fernando Pessoa
Research Reading::
On Deck:
In the Bullpen:
On the Backburner:
The Reread Pile:
Just Bought: Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years...Alan Walker, Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power...Jesse L. Byock

Just a brief note here: my shelves dont list all the books I own, mostly because the idea of adding on over a thousand of the damn things to that particular shelf fills me w/ panic and dread...so, just assume that if it's on the 'read' shelf or the 'I plan to read' shelf, I own it or once did own it...I rarely use libraries...they want you to give the books back, which I dont like to do...who the hell would?

Just for future reference since it seems to be necessary, 'rob' is short for 'roberta'...and the next person who calls me a 'he' or a 'sir' is going to have ALL of Dan Brown's books 'recommended' to them...and that's no idle threat.

'If you hold the bottle against the light as you pour it into the glass, you will see what color Guinness really is. Just where the cheerful liquid flows over the lip of the bottle, you will see a beautiful deep color glittering like a jewel. It is a moment in time and it is called the ruby point...'
Giles Foden
Ladysmith

William Blake said he could see
Vistas of infinity
In the smallest speck of sand
Held in the hollow of his hand.
Models for this claim we've got
In the work of Mandelbrot:
Fractal diagrams partake
Of the essence sensed by Blake.
Basic forms will still prevail
Independent of the Scale;
Viewed from far or viewed from near
Special signatures are clear,
When you magnify a spot,
What you've had before, you've got,
Smaller, smaller, smaller, yet,
Still the same details are set;
Finer than the finest hair
Blake's infinity is there,
Rich in structure all the way-
Just as the mystic poets say.
Jasper Memory - Blake and Fractals

With one breath, with one flow
You will know
Synchronicity
A sleep trance, a dream dance
A shared romance
Synchronicity
The connecting principle
Linked to the invisible
Almost imperceptible
Something inexpressible
Science insusceptible
Logic so inflexible
Causally connectible
Yet nothing is invincible
If we share, this nightmare
We can dream
Spiritus mundi
If you act, as you think
The missing link
Synchronicity
We know you, they know me
Extrasensory
Synchronicity
A star fall, a phone call
It joins all
Synchronicity
It's so deep, it's so wide
You're inside
Synchronicity
Effect without a cause
Sub-atomic laws, scientific pause
Synchronicity...
Sting...and Carl Jung

For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to this agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails...and when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever...
Anonymous 'curse' on book thieves from the monastery of San Pedro, Barcelona, Spain

A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
Stephen Crane

In his autobiography, 'Confessions', written about ce 400, the philosopher and theologian St. Augustine quotes an answer he has heard to the theological equivalent of 'What came before the Big Bang?'
'What was God doing before He created the universe?'
'Before He created Heaven and Earth, God created Hell for people like you who ask this kind of question!'
Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe
Simon Singh

THE POEM OF PANGUR BAN
(proof that cats, books, and writers have always kept company...)

I and Pangur Ban my cat,
Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will,
He too plies his simple skill.

Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.
Irish, 8th century
Written by a student of the monastery of Carinthia on a copy of St. Paul's Epistles.

since Shelfari has now made it extra easy to assign ratings, and since I have now come up w/ an idea to deal w/ the disparity of so many books and genres, I'll start assigning stars as I start filling up my 'own' shelf...
Since it's simply not at all possible to compare Dante to Nora Roberts, or Milton to John Grisham, I'll assign ratings based on one single criteria only: How much did I enjoy it? Since it IS possible for me to enjoy both Dante and Nora immensely, if not on the same level or for the same reasons, then this is the only way for me to rate books and not rip my hair out in frustration...the minute I start judging by writing, plot, dialogue, story, literary importance, readability, so on and so forth, it becomes work, which I have an allergy against...and I really like my hair and dont wanna be bald...

5 stars: completely loved it to pieces
4 stars: liked it immensely
3 stars: was okay-liked it
2 stars: ick
1 star: burn it

A Few Bookish Lyrics...

It's no use, he sees her
He starts to shake and cough
Just like the old man in
That book by Nabokov...
Sting

Well, it was Neal Cassady who started me to travelin'
All the stories I was told, I believed every one of them
Well, it's a wild road I'm on, you understand
With no time to worry 'bout tomorrow
When you're followin' the sun...
Patrick Simmons

There's a moon over Bourbon Street tonight
I see faces as they pass beneath the pale lamplight
I've no choice but to follow that call
The bright lights, the people, and the moon and all
I pray every day to be strong
For I know what I do must be wrong
Oh, you'll never see my shade
Or hear the sound of my feet
While there's a moon over Bourbon Street
It was many years ago
That I became what I am
I was trapped in this life
Like an innocent lamb
Now I can never show my face at noon
And you'll only see me walking by the light of the moon
The brim of my hat hides the eyes of a beast
I've the face of a sinner
But the hands of a priest
Oh, you'll never see my shade
Or hear the sound of my feet
While there's a moon over Bourbon Street
She walks everyday
Through the streets of New Orleans
She's innocent and young
From a family of means
I have stood every day outside her window at night
To struggle with my instinct in the pale lamplight
How could I be this way?
When I pray to God above
I must love what I destroy
And destroy the thing I love
Oh, you'll never see my shade
Or hear the sound of my feet
While there's a moon over Bourbon Street...
Sting - written in the summer of 1984 while sitting in a hotel room on Bourbon Street in New Orleans with a full moon glowing over the city after reading Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire

Hey Jack, now for the tricky part
When you were the brightest star
Who were the shadows?
Of the San Francisco beat boys
You were the favorite
Now they sit and rattle their bones
And think of their blood stoned days.
Natalie Merchant

When I think back on all the crap I learned in High School
It's a wonder I can think at all
And though my lack of education hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall...
Paul Simon

Roses have thorns
Shining waters mud
And cancer lurks deep
In the sweetest bud
Clouds and eclipses
Stain the moon and the sun
And history reeks
Of the wrongs we have done...
Sting...and William Shakespeare

Dear Sir or Madam will you read my book?
It took me years to write will you take a look?
Based on a novel by a man named Lear,
And I need a job,
So I want to be a paperback writer,
It's a dirty story of a dirty man,
And his clinging wife doesn't understand.
His son is working for the Daily Mail,
It's a steady job,
But he wants to be a paperback writer,
It's a thousand pages give or take a few,
I'll be writing more in a week or two,
I can make it longer if you like the style,
I can change it round,
And I want to be a paperback writer,
If you really like it you can have the rights,
It could make a million for you overnight,
If you must return it you can send it here,
But I need a break,
And I want to be a paperback writer...
Lennon-McCartney




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