Dec 28
Dec 01
I love the feel and experience of actual books, so I will most likely never get a Kindle or other ebook reader. However, the idea of purchasing all of Mark Twain’s works (over 300 books and story collections) for $1.00 is mighty tempting.
UPDATE: I just downloaded Kindle for the iPhone for free and purchased the entire collection. I may lose my eyesight, but I will never be bored again.
Jun 22
…come into my tent, young reader.
You say you have just finished Joyce’s Ulysses and are looking for something similar to whet your literary appetite?
Look no further my friend, for you have found the Book Seer.
Mar 09
Feb 11
I would like each and every one of these bookshelves in my house.
Jan 13
When I was 19, my friend Sharon turned me on to Stephen Mitchell’s delightful translation of the Tao to Ching, a powerful little book which changed my life. I’ve read it several times and many of its passages stay with me.
Can you coax your mind from its wandering and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become supple as a newborn child’s?
Can you cleanse your inner vision until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from you own mind and thus understand all things?
Giving birth and nourishing, having without possessing, acting with no expectations, leading and not trying to control: this is the supreme virtue.We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the centre hole that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable.
We work with being, but non-being is what we use.
The only problem is that the book has so many permutations and translations, all which take it in a different direction, some good and some bad. For the true fan, this site offers a complete line-by-line comparison of all 29 transaltions. Get your way on.
Jan 04
Nov 22
Oct 08
Sep 25
The 50 greatest villains in literature.
Not sure if I’d call the Judge from Blood Meridian a villain per se, but a great list nonetheless.
Sep 16
“The truth is that most US academic prose is appalling – pompous, abstruse, claustral, inflated, euphuistic, pleonastic, solecistic, sesquipidelian, Heliogabaline, occluded, obscure, jargon-ridden, empty: resplendently dead.”
Who, tragically, hung himself a few days ago. Which means that future readers will have an even harder time understanding him. But you should really find out for yourself. Because he really was a genius. So, so sad.
Sep 11
Aug 25
This book may go far in debunking the unfortunate misperception that Islam is incompatible with democracy.
Aug 20
While I may personally disagree that all of the books on this list of 50 Amazing and Essential Novels to Enrich Your Library are in fact “amazing” and “essential,” that doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t drop what you are doing and go buy these books immediately and be amazed and enriched according to your own lights.
Aug 06
If you like free audiobooks you’ll like Librivox and Audiobooksforfree.
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