Tag Archives: books
Laugh, And / Weep, And
I was familiar with the first two lines, but didn’t know that it came from a longer poem: Solitude By Ella Wheeler Wilcox Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone; For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, But has trouble enough of its own. Sing, and the hills …
All The Therapy a Person Needs
Excerpted from For Once In My Life by Colleen Coleman, ©2018: I’ll spend the rest of the day tucking into a book from my towering TBR pile which looks like a little paperback city on the either side of my bookcase since I ran out of space on the shelves. I tried to have a …
I maintain / I insist
Excerpted from Abbey’s Road by Edward Abbey, ©1979: I camped that first night near the Olga Mountains, strange hoodoo domes and humps of monolithic, barren sandstone, similar in origin to Ayers Rock but different in color and shape, a little higher, and much more extensive in total area. They looked even older than the Rock, …
Home
Excerpted from Appalachia by Edward Abbey, ©1970: Through town and into the hills, I’d follow a certain road for about seven miles until I came to a church and a graveyard on top of a tall hill. (I worked there once, tending that graveyard and the dead, firing the furnace in the church on winter …
Dash
I heard a Fly buzz – when I died By Emily Dickinson I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air – Between the Heaves of Storm – The Eyes around – had wrung them dry – And Breaths were gathering firm …
Loneliness that Haunts
Excerpted from May This House Be Safe From Tigers, ©1959, by Alexander King: I find it very difficult to make any new friendships, mostly because the people I run into nowadays are full of imbecile ideas which tend to upset me. I’m too old and too busy with my own affairs to spend precious time …
Frankly, My Dear…
Excerpted from What Makes You Not a Buddhist ©2008, by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche: If we could not be bought by praise or defeated by criticism, we would have incredible strength. We would be extraordinarily free, there would be no more unnecessary hopes and fears, sweat and blood and emotional reactions. We would finally be able …
Vaguely Amused
In this excerpt from May This House Be Safe From Tigers, ©1959, Alexander King discusses the defining trait of his native Austria, and how that helped him through a health crisis: First of all, let me solemnly assure you that I have never in all my life met a single really näive Austrian. In a …
Ent
I love the Ents. I’m not unhappy that they made movies based on LoTR, because that introduced a lot of people to the stories that would otherwise have never heard them, but I do miss the fan art. It’s hard, now, to find art based on imagination rather than the movies.
In a Holy Nutshell
Excerpted from Life of Pi by Yann Martel, © 2001: But religion is more than rite and ritual. There is what the rite and ritual stand for. Here too I am a Hindu. The universe makes sense to me through Hindu eyes. There is Brahman, the world soul, the sustaining frame upon which is woven, …
On to the next one!
I’m reading You Can’t Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe, ©1940, and I’m at that horrible point where I’m not really enjoying it anymore, but I’ve invested so much time I hate to walk away without finishing it. He writes beautifully. The problem is that he hates everybody. I’m 165 pages in to a 744 …
