90Outloud
(Der Rabe, Carl Spitzweg, circa 1845)
So. I started this on Friday.
It’s called 90Outloud, and all it is is different people from around the world posting ninety seconds of their favorite passages.
That’s it.
Just 90 seconds. A paragraph. Sometimes not even that. Just a minute and a half for a snippet of book to come suddenly and thrillingly to life.
Why?, you may be wondering.
Because books are awesome! They are a confetti burst of sounds, and images, and ideas. A long gorgeous chain of words, dancing the tongue from roof to teeth to lips. Because books, in some way or another, have added to my life and have added to the lives of those I’ve cared about. Because I still believe that the book is the basic neuron of civilization, carrying impulses— our fears and hopes, the worst and best of ourselves— from the streets up into the seats of power, and out again; it tells us who we are and what we want to be and remains our best astrolabe for an unknown future.
And I think all it takes is 90 seconds of your time. Just 90 seconds.
