The poet should speak to all men, for a moment, of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.
Edith Sitwell (via nathanielstuart1)
NOTES:
1) nathanielstuart, June 7, 2011, (page no longer available, web site is still active, accessed April 27, 2024, https://www.tumblr.com/nathanielstuart)
How many book lovers among the young has the Internet produced? Far fewer, I suspect, than the millions libraries have turned out over the last hundred years.
—Charles Simic1
NOTES:
1) Charles Simic, “A Country Without Libraries,” May 18, 2011, The New York Review, accessed May 25, 2011, https://www.nybooks.com/online/2011/05/18/country-without-libraries/
You can change a reader’s life, and you can change—you should change, I think—your own life.
David Grossman (via theparisreview)
I don’t write because there’s an audience. I write because there is literature.
Susan Sontag (via theparisreview)
Can do better, will do better.
Andre Dubus III, Six-Word Memoir from the Memoirville interview at Smith Magazine (via wwnorton)
One must withdraw for a time from life in order to set down that picture.
John Steinbeck (via theparisreview)
The underestimation of the human intelligence is the worst sin of our time…
Mortimer J. Adler
Ein Haus ohne Bücher ist arm, auch wenn schöne Teppiche seinen Boden und kostbare Tapeten und Bilder die Wände bedecken.
(A house without books is poor, even if beautiful carpets cover its floor and expensive wallpapers cover the walls.)
Hermann Hesse (via germanheit)
There was a brief, shiny moment sometime in the early 90s when Barnes & Nobles and Borders were opening on every corner, and at the same time the bubbling dot-coms were luring editorial talent away from print and into digital publishing. Those two factors converged to make life as a Publisher or Acquisitions editor pretty lush for a few years — salaries in the industry went up by over 30% and the enormous competition to sign talent to fill the shelves of all those miles of shelves in those new stores (and that mysterious new thing called Amazon.com too) made way for expense accounts and advance budgets that were unprecedented. That crazy growth, however, was totally unsustainable. Once the dot-com bubble burst, and new stores were no longer coming online, we were left with no new growth, a significant erosion of independent bookstores, consumer trained to expect cheap prices on books, and a overabundance of new “B-level” titles.
High times in publishing! « ConfessionsOfAnITGirl.com (via fluffynotes)
Publishers typically sign on new projects, do some big-picture editing, then pass the project to the editor, who does the more painstaking work of carrying the project from its detailed editing and design stages to production. The life of an editor and publisher involves more reading than you can fit into a day at the office. We have to keep up with the publishing world, know what people want to buy, work closely and diplomatically with authors, and lug around heavy satchels of manuscripts. People often liken editors and publishers to midwives. The industry is dominated by women who aren’t paid all that well, but who are working in this helping, nurturing role, counselling authors and helping bring their “baby” into the world.
Knowledge is erotic.
Jane Hirshfield, from her book Nine Gates
About 10% of Cambridge University Press’s sales of academic and professional titles are generated by books printed on demand…. Before POD, if sales of one of the publisher’s books dropped below 50 copies a year, it was taken out of print. Now a publisher can keep titles available forever.
The Economist (link)
Two regional titles in Germany, Berliner Morgenpost and Hamburger Abendblatt, have put up pay walls around premium content. But two big national titles, Bild and Die Welt (owned by publishing company Axel Springer), are keeping their websites free while selling iPhone-app subscriptions for $2 to $5 a month. And when The Guardian, Britain’s most-visited newspaper website, launched a $3.73 iPhone app — despite outspoken rejection of the pay-wall model — it sold 70,000 in the first month.
Ad Age (link)
Le Monde in France, for example, has been charging for premium content since 2002, and has racked up 100,000 subscribers steadily paying $8 a month — even though its traditional newspaper circulation is barely more than 300,000.
Ad Age (link)
I remain suspicious, however, of anyone who argues that online social networks, like Facebook, will revolutionize human interactions. Whenever I encounter some utopian celebration of Facebook, I always go back and read some Jane Goodall, or Robert Sapolsky, and remind myself that our social lives haven’t changed that much since we were hairy apes patrolling the African forest. In fact, the most obvious parallel for just about every primate troop remains high school. It’s not that Facebook doesn’t matter – it’s just that our social lives are stubborn things, and tend to revolve around the same constants regardless of the technology.
Jonah Lehrer, “Facebook Friends,” The Frontal Cortex (via somethingchanged)
I bought a decaffeinated coffee table, you can’t even see a difference.
Author Unknown (via coffeechat)
Clients are the difference between art and design.
Michael Bierut (via soulellis)
Moral #1: “If you work hard, stay focused, and never give up, you will eventually get what you want in life.”
Moral #2: Sometimes the things we want most in life are the things that will kill us.
I am something of a recluse by nature. I am that cordless screwdriver that has to charge for twenty hours to earn ten minutes use. I need that much downtime.
On-demand services can rarely satisfy our old-fashioned desire to sometimes be surprised. We’ve read too many reviews and PR quips about the show before clicking to download it – we know exactly what to expect. What’s lost in this process is the joy of stumbling upon something new and exciting—the accidental discovery. Lost, too, is the thrill of the chase for that elusive something that, in ancient history, led members of our species to many a dusty shelf or bin in an old fashioned brick and mortar store.
On-demand media exerts conflicting pressures on us. It draws us away from our co-workers and neighbors while simultaneously connecting us to a global community thousands strong. It dilutes the dwindling pool of cultural touchstones we share, but in doing so, exposes each of us to a vast ocean of possibility. It gives us virtually anything we could ever want at our fingertips, but threatens to overwhelm us with such abundance.
We Are United in Our Digital Isolation, PopMatters (via somethingchanged)
‘Church isn’t boring because we’re not showing enough film clips, or because we play an organ instead of guitar. It’s boring because we neuter it of its importance. Too often we treat our spiritual lives like the round of golf used to open George Barna’s Revolution. At the end of my life, I want my friends and family to remember me as someone who battled for the Gospel, who tried to mortify sin in my life, who found hard for life, and who contended earnestly for the faith. Not just a nice guy who occasionally noticed the splendor of the mountains God created, while otherwise just trying to enjoy myself, manage my schedule, and work on my short game.
-Ted Kluck, from Why We Love The Church: In Praise of Institutions And Organized Religion
HT: Pyromaniacs: I Lose, You Win (via nickbogardus) (via papertowngirl)
After suffering declining revenues, layoffs and widespread closures, magazines and newspapers need to do something to reinvent the future of publishing.
Could New E-Readers Change Publishing Game? – PC World
Has anyone mentioned the fact that an e-reader could just be replaced by an iphone or black berry?
(via fluffynotes)
We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering -these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love -these are what we stay alive for.
Dead Poets Society (via ireadintothings)
Speaking from personal experience, I’ve noticed something lately. The more I use technology (and I am on this damn computer a lot…too much), the more I want to read a magazine. But I want different things than I wanted five years ago. Frankly, I want a break. I want to be surprised and delighted …
The Internet is a technology that enables people to go out in SEARCH of things. I’m all for that and love it to pieces. But sometimes, I just want things to FIND me. Sometimes, I am just tired of looking and typing and seeking, and I just want to sit on my comfortable couch and be surprised when I turn the page.
That’s why I believe magazines won’t die.
Coffeehouse Junkie 