Reading the O.E.D.
And these are just the A words:
Astorgy is the lack of natural affection when it would normally be present.
Accismus is an insincere refusal of a thing that is desired.
Agathokakological means made up of both good and evil.
the codus sinaiticus
The oldest known version of the New Testament is being put online.
Handwritten in Greek more than 1,600 years ago — it isn’t exactly clear where — the surviving 400 or so pages carry a version of the New Testament that has a few interesting differences from the Bible used by Christians today.
The Gospel of Mark ends abruptly after Jesus’ disciples discover his empty tomb, for example. Mark’s last line has them leaving in fear.
“It cuts out the post-resurrection stories,” said Juan Garces, curator of the Codex Sinaiticus Project. “That’s a very odd way of ending a Gospel.”
James Davila, a professor of early Jewish studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland, said the Codex also includes religious works foreign to the Roman Catholic and Protestant canons — such as the “Epistle of Barnabas” and the “Shepherd of Hermas,” a book packed with visions and parables.
Davila stressed that did not mean the works were necessarily considered Scripture by early Christians: They could have been bound with the Bible to save money.
designers’ favorite typefaces
(via swissmiss)
Good Books with Worst Titles
Tyler Cowen asks for a list of good books with bad titles.
Lish’s The Quarterly
We talked about this a few months ago, but can someone scan the table of contents of some of the issues? Or, rather, which are the best issues to purchase? I’d love to read the issues with Cooper and Daryl. And of course Diane Williams, etc. Thanks.
hotbooks
hotbooks has kindly taken note lately of publishers Ravenna and Calamari, their authors Kim Chinquee, Miranda Mellis, Robert Lopez and Brandon Hobson, and even elimae. Just scroll down a bit and. . .
‘The Dumbest Generation’ by Mark Bauerlein
In the four minutes it probably takes to read this review, you will have logged exactly half the time the average 15- to 24-year-old now spends reading each day. That is, if you even bother to finish. If you are perusing this on the Internet, the big block of text below probably seems daunting, maybe even boring. Who has the time? Besides, one of your Facebook friends might have just posted a status update!
Of Books and Garbage Dumpsters
In the hard-on hope of injecting a shot of levity into the exchange concerning the tossing of books, I offer two incidents from the life of Ryan.
Read more
Toss It!
Tyler Cowen makes a case for throwing away read books.
The Woman in White
I just began Wilkie Collins’ famous “sensation novel” (1860) night before last, and I’m already pretty sure that Mr. Fairlie will be one of the most memorable minor characters I’ve yet encountered.
Cover shot
what should I title this post?
Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive
Is there a word that comes to mind as you watch this guy?
a short review of The Levitationist
Today Blake Butler wrote a short review of my book The Levitationist over at hotbooks.today.com.
Opium 6 Go Green! (But Save Me First)
The Go Green! issue of Opium Magazine (Spring 2008) is now available. Sample spreads at davidbarringer.blogspot.com. (You can also see sample spreads of issues 3, 4 and 5 on my site). Meanwhile, buy the issue or subscribe here.
Contents: stories by Aimee Bender, Benjamin Percy, and many others. Winners of the Opium Bookmark Story Contest. Each issue comes with a bookmark on which is printed the winning 250-word story. Interview with Amanda Lear. 100-word stories from Tuesday Shorts, including one by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Select stories from the wit-lit ezine Sweet Fancy Moses. Beautifully wrought satire from the “Go Green! Guidebook of Restraint & Responsibility,” by yours truly. Art from Tymek Jezierski. Cartoons from CM Evans and John Callahan. Editor Todd Zuniga.
yes I said yes I will Yes
Happy Bloomsday, clusterflock!
Glenn Gould’s Autograph
Tyler Cowen, at Marginal Revolution, quotes Katie Hafner’s A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano:
He disliked giving autographs for the same reason he was wary of writing checks for fear the results might be unlucky. But when he did give an autograph or sign a check (or any other document, for that matter), he always misspelled his own first name writing it as “Glen.” Kazdin once asked him why, and Gould explained that he had discovered years earlier that once he got his hand to start forming the two n’s he couldn’t stop and would keep going and write three, so he decided to abort the exercise after one. Kazdin was skeptical. “This supposed lack of manual control is a little hard to swallow coming from the man who could play an unbroken stream of thirty-second notes faster and cleaner than any other pianist on the face of the earth.”
Blue Zones
What do Sardinian sheepherders, Japanese grandmothers, and Seventh-Day Adventists in Los Angeles have in common? They are among the most long-lived people in the world. Dan Buettner spent five years visiting areas where people tend to live longer and wrote a book about them called The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest.
One of the most striking people he met during his travels was 104-year-old Giovanni Sannai of Sardinia. “He was out chopping wood at 9 in the morning,” Buettner tells guest host Audie Cornish. “He started his day with a glass of wine and there was a steady parade of people coming by to ask his advice. That’s one of the characteristics of the Sardinian Blue Zone — the older you get, the more celebrated you are.”
I Am Going to Buy This Book
This has potential to be amazing.
With that simple question and an enormous white suggestion box, the New York City based collaborative Illegal Art canvassed the five boroughs, collecting suggestions from passersby of every stripe the young, the old, the filthy rich, the homeless, the mouthy, and the shy. “Love each other or perish.” “Take breath mints when offered.” “Give me a break!” In true New York style, the suggestions are by turns hilarious, nonsensical, angering, and heartwarming. Some people held the suggestion box prisoner while they wrote suggestion after suggestion; others ignored the box, but then came scrambling back with a sudden idea. One woman scribbled as she walked down Wall Street: “More time in the day.” One man in Harlem, when asked if he would like to make a suggestion, said, “Isn’t it obvious? World peace.” Or at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, a woman sadly wrote her misspelled suggestion and then held it up for all to read: “Never brake up with someone on a bridge.” With over 350 entries and 50 photos of the suggestion box in action, Suggestion is authentic, honest, and totally appealing a testiment to the the public’s innermost desire, whether it’s free beer, free daycare, or free pumpkin pie every Thursday.
(thx Leo)
When ‘Writer’ Means ‘Typer’
Idea: how about you get a newspaper and type every single word of it into a book, then try to market the book as avant garde neo-poetry? Kenneth Goldsmith did exactly that with Day, an 840-page book that contains every single word of an NYTimes issue.
He typed an entire issue of the New York Times into an 840-page book called Day. He recently completed a trilogy, The Weather, Traffic and Sports. They are transcriptions of a year of radio weather reports, a 24-hour traffic cycle and the radio broadcast of a Yankees game. Ums, uhs and ads included. If you think that sounds unreadable, you’re right. Goldsmith himself says, “I don’t read them. I get bored.”
Odd way to get your 15 minutes, but hey, at least he got them.
‘Uncreative Writer’ Retypes the ‘New York Times’
(via swissmiss)
Dear Clusterflock
- “I Dream of Wires” or “Please Push No More”?
- Dubliners or Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or Ulysses or Finnegans Wake?
- “7 & 7 is” or “96 Tears”?
Speaking of Anger Problems
At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain’s hair and said, “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain’s face reddened, and he responded, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” McCain’s excuse was that it had been a long day.
See the Raw Story piece here.
Two quotes, the first one just for Cindy
“Through the shrubbery on the south side of the lawn, a path led to a walk lined with hazels, where grey squirrels were up to their mischief in the canopy of branches overhead.”
–W.G. Sebald (trans. by Michael Hulse), The Emigrants (Harvill, 1996, p. 6)
“I remember that Valery came to see me one afternoon at home, after eating, looking for me so we could take a walk. While I was getting ready, he took a sheet of my paper and wrote:
‘Story’
Once there was a writer ________ who wrote.
Valery”
–Enrique Vila-Matas, “Recuerdos inventados” (Recuerdos inventados, Anagrama, 1994, pp. 13-14)
Just Finished: First Three Books in my Summer Stack
All through the year I add novels, collections of stories and poems, memoirs–all kinds of books–to my stack of summer reading, and I have just made the first small dent in it: Philip Roth’s Everyman; Thomas Cobb’s Shavetail; and Paulette Jiles’s Enemy Women.
