"I think I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and fields absolutely free from all worldly engagements." #Thoreau #Quote #QuoteOfTheDay— Henry David Thoreau (@ThoreauPage) April 7, 2019
On the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission, director Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee (@evaughanlee) released "Earthrise". This documentary tells the story of this special launch solely through the experience of the astronauts onboard. #overview #earthrise https://t.co/H6Bx9o6GbP pic.twitter.com/6jFMqnGav2— The Long Now Foundation (@longnow) March 5, 2019
Kingsolver has long written socially, politically and environmentally alert novels that engage with the wider world and its complications and vulnerabilities, all the while rendering the specific, smaller worlds of her characters humane and resonant. In “Unsheltered,” she has given us another densely packed and intricately imagined book. Variations on the word “shelter” appear in these pages repeatedly, as the novel considers what it means to be taken care of (or not), as well as what it means to be kept, or to willingly keep oneself, from the cold blast of the truth...
Kingsolver explores how anyone might possibly find a safe place in this world that we keep befouling through ignorance, greed or incompetence... Kingsolver’s dual narrative works beautifully here. By giving us a family and a world teetering on the brink in 2016, and conveying a different but connected type of 19th-century teetering, Kingsolver eventually creates a sense not so much that history repeats itself, but that as humans we’re inevitably connected through the possibility of collapse, whether it’s the collapse of our houses, our bodies, logic, the social order or earth itself.I was not surprised to read in the Acknowledgements at the end that Kingsolver's guiding spirits in this novel happen to have included three "illuminating" books I've used in courses in the past: This Changes Everything, by Naomi Klein, The Bridge at the Edge of the World, by James Gustave Speth, and The Book That Changed America, by Randall Fuller. And, "George Eliot kept nineteenth-century voices in my ear."
"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind." God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (and see Mr. Rogers, below)
"Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail."
Jailbird, prologue
When asked in 1978 about his writing process, Updike said, “I’ve never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think that pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them, you will never write again.”
After the birth of his third child, he had rented an office above a restaurant in Ipswich, and spent several hours each morning writing there. Throughout his 50-year career, he remained devoted to that schedule, writing about three pages every morning after breakfast, sometimes more if things were going well. He said: “Back when I started, our best writers spent long periods brooding in silence. Then they’d publish a big book and go quiet again for another five years. I decided to run a different kind of shop.” WA
 | Alain de Botton (@alaindebotton) |
Why ‘Earthrise’ Matters thebookoflife.org/why- | |
 | Five Books (@five_books) |
The 'father of science fiction' HG Wells suffered terribly from class anxiety. Huxley and Woolf thought him 'vulgar' == Five books on... | |
Charles Darwin (@cdarwin)1/11/15, 6:51 AM"And maybe this is what I have learned more than anything from my great-great-grandfather: to keep my eyes and my mind open, to enjoy the wonders of nature and never cease to ask questions." Sarah Darwin, foreword to "A Modest Genius: The story of Darwin's life and how his ideas changed everything" by Hanne Strager
Posts
All Comments
Posts
All Comments
