I have like 50 things I need to do but I just want to read for a while.
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wall to wall, ceiling to floor
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Usutu: You must find your totem, a spirit guide that attaches to your subconscious. It will lead you on your journey.
Parkman: What is that some African, mystical, mojo thing?
Usutu: Carl Jung. Analytical psychology. You don’t read much, do you?
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"I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship"Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Pg 62 (via bookporn)
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"A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader’s. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it."Ian McEwan Atonement (via circumstanceanddisposition)
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I like reading outside…
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I’m going to get to the summer, and I’m going to enter my cocoon of reading, and I’m going to miss something important. There’s a question here at the end of the year, under the surface of all the stress and deadlines. How can I be a better person? How can I be better at life?
I will most likely squeeze by and feel okay about this year, about how it ends. My mind will mend itself like a muscle after extreme exertion. It is good. And I will be a little better at my job next year for the lessons I’m learning and reflecting on now.
Work is part of who you are, no matter what importance you give it. It is an indicator of the spirit with which you encounter and embrace life. I need to learn more than the lessons of the mind.
(#come back to this)
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He had been invited to introduce a story and was pulling down books from the shelves to reread a few of the old obscure favorites. They had to be obscure, he thought, or there was no point in introducing one of them. The books were scattered on the floor, and he had to be careful to avoid tripping over them or kicking one of them into the corner. Some of the stories, once reread, no longer seemed quite so appropriate for the occasion, however. Conrad Aiken’s “The Woman-Hater” still had its shockingly beautiful paragraph two pages from the end, when the college kid is kissed by a woman he doesn’t know and wakes up like Sleeping Beauty, but the rest of the story seemed too drab, too perfunctorily written. Aiken’s “Silent Snow, Secret Snow,” about a boy’s descent into schizophrenia, was still perfect in its evocation of a child’s mental vertigo but was, it seemed, constantly anthologized. Evan Connell’s “Arcturus” was too long for inclusion in an anthology, as was Isak Dinesen’s “Sorrow-acre.” Kipling’s “They” could effectively give anyone the shivers. All the same, it seemed, upon reexamination, too tricky by half and culturally unpleasant in the way that Kipling could sometimes be. Anyone introducing such a story might feel an urge to apologize for it—a bad way to start. Katherine Anne Porter’s “Noon Wine” was bulletproof but, like “Arcturus,” too long and hardly obscure. He didn’t know enough about some writers and their traditions, Yasunari Kawabata’s or Bessie Head’s, for example, to introduce one of their stories. And he didn’t feel like introducing writers who needed no introduction, at least from him: Chekhov or Alice Munro or Italo Calvino. Dozens of others.
Sighing happily, he took down Lars Gustafsson’s Stories of Happy People and reread “Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases.” Probably it was the story he had wanted to introduce all along.
- Charles Baxter in “You’ve Got to Read This”
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I almost didn’t reblog this. But something stuck in my subconscious (?). I scrolled back, searched. “soon, soon”. Me too.
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"Keep reading. It’s one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have."Lloyd Alexander
