On Paths Unknown discussion
The Anything Goes chit-chat thread (subject to tiny fine-print rules)
Yes! Treebooks, ebooks, public domain books, second hand books, library books, books as gifts - life just doesn't get any better than that. When I carry a bag with a new book/s I am in ecstasy for that moment :)Also, it IS fun browsing your books and choosing something. And the hunt at a thrift book store. Recently did that and came back with a stack since they were practically free in the level of cheap :)
Another thing, I miss my University library and its discarding of old books days. They would pack tables and tables of books no longer in use and just give them away for free. You could fill a big bag or bags (depending on how much you can carry) with a huge variety in types of books. Unfortunately you get kicked out when you're done studying since it's not for the public, unless you pay an expensive monthly fee for membership and sadly I can't :( Have to stick to the public library now.
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Commiserations, Yolande. It sounds like you at least managed to come away with some good loot there.
Most libraries actually have pretty good-ish penny sales on discarded books. Sometimes they'll discard perfectly good books for minor things like tears or scribblings.
Therefore I will not feel guilty anymore for buying more books when I have a bunch unread since collecting books is one of life's few true pleasures for me (along with reading of course :) )Me too. I love having so many to choose from. Sometimes a book needs to ripen for a few years before you pluck it from a shelf.
What I wish I could be better at, though, is identifying books I'm never going to read, and just not buying them to begin with.
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Ha, you're not in marketing, are you? XD That actually sounds poetic.
Traveller wrote: "Poingu wrote: "Therefore I will not feel guilty anymore for buying more books when I have a bunch unread since collecting books is one of life's few true pleasures for me (along with reading of cou..."Yolande wrote it. I just loved it and requoted it...I'm still getting the hang of how to quote things correctly.
Haha! I'm not in marketing, I do editing and translation work actually.I think it's because the majority of fiction books I 've read so far are 18th century/Victorian novels which messes with my head where old-style language is concerned :D
But thanks for the compliment :)
Travel said:"So.. 200 books? Pffft!"I put a moratorium on buying new books until I cull my hoard.
A few weeks ago I carted around 200 books to the Blind Store (a charity thrift) and didn't even feel it. I got home, looked around, it didn't make a dent. What I really need is a devastating house fire.
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Oops, I thought I had pasted the bit: >>>Sometimes a book needs to ripen for a few years before you pluck it from a shelf. <<< into the little quote section, but obviously the copy/paste didn't take and i was in a hurry to leave, so i never saw that before exiting my computer. That will teach me to make posts on my way out....not that Yolande's comment wasn't also poetic - I see she waxes lyrical when it comes to book - collecting, and I want to sing in her choir!
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I put a moratorium on buying new books until I cull my hoard.
A few weeks ago I carted around 200 books to the Blind Store (a charity thrift) and didn't even ..."
If 200 books don't even make a dent, you are my kind of person. But it not hurting even a teensy bit? I suppose i can vaguely relate to that - I have in the past maybe managed to get rid of 10 or 15 books and actually felt relieved to be rid of them, in fact, proud that i could do it, but 200 without a pang?
You're a BOSS, Gregsamsa! :O
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I feel myself very fortunate that my folks had so many old classics lying around while i was a kid - from the previous 2 centuries through the 50's and 60's, which gave me a good tolerance for more archaic forms of speech, I suspect. I have friends who never read anything older than what was written in the 70's, and they cannot stand what they call a "flowery" style in writing, but i love it.
I've considered the house fire solution. Problem is, I finally have a house. :)Culling is so hard it's easier to look at the piles. Sigh! I guess I should be grateful the piles haven't migrated to the floor yet. LOL! Then my cats would do the culling.
I agree with you traveller, the part about the book ripening in the shelf caught my eye as well, it sounded so good :)
Oh wait. When I said "I didn't even feel it" I meant the culling's impact on hoardsize, whose bulk is verging on the pathological.The sorting itself was agonizing and ludicrously time-consuming, as every title, no matter how long neglected, would spark a little pleading voice in my mind: But you might want to refer to me one day! You might want to (re)read me after all! I might be the perfect book to give to someone some day! and other niggles so numerous the time I spent would have been excessive had I boxed up 2,000, not a measly 200.
Then there's the weird guilt, as if shedding a book is some sort of statement: should I really toss Feminist Criticism And Social Change or The Poems of Phillis Wheatley? It's exhausting. I'm not the boss; the books are!
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Culling is so hard it's easier to look at the piles. Sigh! I guess I should be grateful the piles haven't migrated..."
LOL! In my case they have.(Migrated to the floor), because there simply is not more space for yet more bookshelves, and in some cases I have closets doubling as bookcases. But referring to Gregsamsa's comments in post 64 - That right There is why I'd rather just stick the less desirable books under my bed than actually *shudder* go through the trauma of convincing myself that really, i will never get to read this book, i will never refer to it, nobody i know will ever want it, and....i will never even look at it, and.... But i do put my foot down at books that i have read and liked. They stay. They need never find a new home, because i just couldn't. They are my friends, and you don't leave a friend behind.
Right?
Oh, another thing: a lot of you likely already know this, but just in case: I was thinking about the posts above re no longer being able to check books out from a uni library: maybe you can! Check with your local public library (I'm addressing USA folks here--sorry) about their inter-library lending policies. You can check if a book you want is in a nearby library you don't have borrowing privileges at by going to the wonderful
https://www.worldcat.org/
Enter your zip code and browse away. Its database is HELLA better than gr's.
Now I'm back off to bed. Jeez I just got on GR to let reviews help me decide which new library book was going on the nightstand.
An hour later....
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Though if you just look around there might even be libraries that are not bound to area.
Traveller wrote: "Ruth wrote: "I've considered the house fire solution. Problem is, I finally have a house. :)Culling is so hard it's easier to look at the piles. Sigh! I guess I should be grateful the piles hav
...don't leave a friend behind"
Of course not!
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Some books have been on my shelves for so long I began to think of them as furniture. I picked up the very large Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates the other day - I've had it for years - and was surprised to find out I could read it if I wanted to. There was print inside. It wasn't just something to put random pens and stuff on.
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LOL, you mean that like myself, you have books that serve as book-ends? And no, as for myself, i have not gone as far as making desks and door-stops out of them, but you're giving me some ideas here. XD (Hmmm, a book-shelf out of books? Sounds like a good idea!)
Speaking of making furniture with books, have you seen the film Paper Man?
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I for one, haven't. Would you recommend it?
It was fun, had some surprises. I like Jeff Daniels, so that was the main reason for watching it. I mentioned it mostly for the odd things he does with furniture and books.
I just realized that, while I don't have guilt about buying books and not reading them, I think of my "to-read" list on Goodreads as those books that I genuinely intend to read within the next few weeks. Right now I have 126 books on there, which is a little guilt-inducing.
You can do it, Poingu! You just need to read one book every two hours and forty minutes.NO SLEEPING
There is one book that I want more than anything else. Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry I read parts of it in my Uni library and I was blown away at how much it helps you to deepen your understanding of the poetry you read. But it is soooo expensive, I want to faint ;b I hope I'll be able to get it some time :O
Yolande wrote: "There is one book that I want more than anything else. Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry I read parts of it in my Uni library and I was blown away at how much it helps you to de..."Yolande, if you don't mind getting the next-to-last edition of some of these books, you can get them very cheaply...and frequently editions just don't change that much from one to the next:
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Searc...
Gregsamsa wrote: "You can do it, Poingu! You just need to read one book every two hours and forty minutes.NO SLEEPING"
Ok! Or alternatively I can get busy with buying the books on the list that I don't already own, thereby avoiding guilt by substituting shopping for reading, because it takes a lot less time to buy many books than to read many books.
Seriously, I have such a weird relationship with all my Goodreads lists. For instance I've also noticed that books I actually take the time to add to my "currently reading" list, instead of just reading them and posting them to the "read" list directly, end up being the ones that I never finish.
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Face it, we bibliophiles around here are collectors. And no collector is not going to enjoy what he/she enjoys collecting. ;)
But also, if you think about it, what is retail therapy about? It is not about spending money, it is about the hunt and about acquiring things. People like to acquire things; it's part of survival if you think about it, so we're hard-wired for it - something to remember when taking your next Marxism class... :P
I saw the perfect bibliophile pic today with a dash of dance :)http://www.pinterest.com/pin/10794572...
Tried to post the picture via GR instructions but it didn't work, so I can only post the page *sigh*
Gregsamsa wrote: "Oh, another thing: a lot of you likely already know this, but just in case: I was thinking about the posts above re no longer being able to check books out from a uni library: maybe you can! C..."
Thanks for the worldcat site. Love it ... I've also gotten a lot of use out of overdrive.com, but only because it's the mechanism whereby folks in our state can check out ebooks using our public library credentials. I highly recommend it if you can.
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"
Yolande's image:
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Now it seems to me as if people somehow got the message that this was to be a re-iteration of Miévillians (which was a group I created for a friend - I wasn't even a fan of China Miéville at the time!) but under a different name. I'm not sure how to set the record straight. Perhaps people can help me out with this by giving me some feedback on how I can improve my communication? :(
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Oh goodie! Yes, so all is not lost after all. \0/ Thanks for that encouraging feedback, Poingu!
And I'd simply just forgotten about Jose Saramago, is all. Shall we put on his Blindness for some time when we magically wake up one morning and find that we suddenly have 34 hours in our day? ...or perhaps something else by Saramago?
Oh yes, Amelia Gray. Our other moderator (who seems to be very busy at work these days) did mention Amelia Gray and said he was going to add her which is why I haven't yet. But if he doesn't soon, I will! :)
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Well, we've already read every single one of them besides Un-Lun-Dun and his short stories, Poingu. Most of the people currently in this group are either people who came along from Miévillians or are friends whom I'd sent invites to, so they would either have read them already, or if they wanted to, they could simply go and add to the discussions over at Miévillians here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
So we'd not be planning to read any Miéville here on Paths.
I just didn't put them all on the 'read' shelf here - just the most representative ones, otherwise our shelves here might look too skewed towards Miéville.
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There are tons of books others have read that i haven't yet... i guess each person only has so much time... *shrug*
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Wow we are getting dangerously on topic here. Let me change that posting this amazing soundcloud mix of Jeff Goldblum's laugh in Jurassic Park:https://soundcloud.com/flip-shot/haha...
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https://soundcloud.com/flip-shot/haha..."
I like it. (Well, not sure if I'm listening past where I was supposed to, but it (as you carry on with that track)) sounds like Dubstep
Ah,no wonder, I see it's Brostep. Very cool. Nice base there.
Oh, Oops. That because it just changes tracks and I did go down to some Brostep. ..or is it? hmmm... going though them again... the brostep sounds boring now. Oh well. I liked something there... :P
I can't find something else nice to recommend now that is in mp3 format.
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Traveller wrote: "Sadly most of the books we read are quite hard in the respects you mentioned, yes..."Sadly, Traveller? I thought that's why we were here to read those books that we want to read but know we are going to need a push here or there.
Happily that's the kind of books we are going to read. :D
Ruth wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Sadly most of the books we read are quite hard in the respects you mentioned, yes..."Sadly, Traveller? I thought that's why we were here to read those books that we want to rea..."
I second that! :)
Today is International Holocaust Day. A remembrance day of the liberation of Auschwitz where 1.1 million Jews perished. If your heart is attuned to the brevity and frailty of life and the human soul, then you will clearly hear Nelly Sachs' plea. It describes the trepidation and trauma of survivors in returning to normal life in a heart-wrenching manner.
Chorus of the Rescued.
By Nelly Sachs
Translated by Michael Roloff
We, the rescued,
From whose hollow bones death had begun to whittle his flutes,
And on whose sinews he had already stroked his bow—
Our bodies continue to lament
With their mutilated music.
We, the rescued,
The nooses would for our necks still dangle
Before us the blue air—
Hourglasses still fill with out dripping blood.
We, the rescued,
The worms of fear still feed on us.
Our constellation is buried in dust.
We, the rescued,
Beg you:
Show us your sun…. but gradually.
Lead us from star to star, step by step.
Be gentle when you teach us to live again.
Lest the song of a bird,
Or a pail being filled at the well,
Let our badly sealed pain burst forth again
And carry us away—
We beg you:
Do not show us any angry dog, not yet—
It could be, it could be
That we will dissolve into dust—
Dissolve into dust before your eyes.
For what binds our fabric together?
We whose breath vacated us,
Whose soul fled to Him out of that midnight?
Long before our bodies were rescued
Into the arc of the moment.
We, the rescued,
We press your hand
We look into your eye—but all that binds us together now is leave-taking.
The leave-taking in the dust
Binds us together with you.
Nelly Sachs was a German poet and dramatist who became a poignant spokesperson for the grief and yearnings of her fellow Jews. When, with Shmuel Yosef Agnon, she was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize for Literature, she observed that Agnon represented Israel whereas “I represent the tragedy of the Jewish people.”
In “Chorus of the Rescued,” the pain described is their attempts to come to terms with the certainty of their deaths and the surprising reprieve given to the survivors. Sachs utilizes striking imagery such as; death had begun to “whittle his flutes” from their hollow bones and “hourglasses still fill with our dripping blood” In their weakened state, fear is an obstacle that they cannot overcome. A reason to hope has been so recently restored to them that they need special treatment to embrace it. “Our constellation is buried in the dust. We, the rescued, beg you: show us your sun, but gradually” . Their hope is tinged with timidity and uncertainty because they are barely clinging to composure and admit that it would only take a slight trigger for them to lose their equilibrium. If they face that degree of suffering again they will “dissolve into dust before your eyes” .
Later in the poem, the speaker asks, “for what binds our fabric together?” Searching for the connection that allows them to relate to others, the answer appears in the lines that follow, “all that binds us together now is leave-taking”
Sachs makes sense of pain by noting that it is what binds people together. They are united with others through shared experience of loss suffered and united with the diverse population because they need new strength to rebuild their lives.
This poem, as Milosz said, “describe the beauty of the simplest things and exemplify the effort to resist the temptation of utter despair”
From : Art from the ashes: A Holocaust Anthology
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If your heart is attuned to the brevity and frailty of life and the human s..."
Thank you so much for that, PGR. It's a very solemn occasion. That poem has given me the shivers. It is a haunting, terrifying remembrance. :( I can't stop getting the shivers now.
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Poetry thread here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
I hope PG doesn't mind, but I have posted Nelly's poem there as an excellent entry to start the thread off with.
Poingu wrote: "Everyone should read Blindness"Hear hear!
Re World Holocaust Remembrance Day...
As a Jew I'm pretty satisfied with the level of awareness people in general have about what happened in WW2. As a gay dude I so am not.
The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals
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Hear hear!
Re World Holocaust Remembrance Day...
As a Jew I'm pretty satisfied with the level of awareness people in general have about what happen..."
Have you read the book, Gregsamsa? I suppose they slotted gay people in with their 'people with deficiencies' who, according to their eugenics programmes were to be sterilized (plan A) and then later they went on to: " it's much cheaper just to have them 'euthenased'." (Except, their 'extermination' methods were far from pleasant.) God, they were monsters.
It must have already been hell if you were either Jewish or gay and you were a member of the Nazi party and had managed to hide the fact (I know there were indeed people like that). It must have been double hell if you were both. :S
On Paths Unknown
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Thanks Yolande, cute vid. ^_^
(And yes, the ebooks are a godsend because of - you know, space...)
Oh yes, and what she says about "the hunt" - that's very true. I have been a used bookstore patron ever since I can remember. I come from quite an eccentric family, and on both sides, my mother and my father's side, they were always hoarding books. My maternal grandparents had a garageful of old books, and one of the biggest Saturday/Sunday afternoon treats for me, used to be going with mother or uncle or grandmother to go and trawl the fleamarket or the used bookstore for bargains. So.. 200 books? Pffft!