On The Nature Of Things

Apply your mind now, hear the truth of reason!
A new fact fights to clear its way, to accost you
And show you a new aspect of the world.
Nothing's so very easy to believe
Which at first does not seem incredible;
So too nothing's so great or wondrous, whose
Wonder will not diminish, little by little.
The purity and brilliance of the sky–
Observe it first, and all that it encloses,
The planets that veer, the moon, the splendor of sunlight–
If all these, out of the blue, now hurled themselves
For the first time before our human sight,
What could be called more wonderful than they?
What would we less have dared to prophesy?
Nothing. We'd have beheld this sky with awe.
Now no one even deigns to lift his eyes
To the light-filled temples of heaven, so stuffed, so weary
We are with its sight. Leave, then, this terror of mere
Novelty, cease to spit up the truth, but rather
Weigh with a keener judgment; if it seems true,
Surrender; if false, strap on your armor against it.
For the mind seeks to know: if boundless space
Stretches beyond the battlements of the world,
What lies at last where thought desires to glimpse,
Where the hurl of the mind soars far at liberty?

On The Nature Of Things, II.1025-1045 – Lucretius, Esolen translation

Elements of Style

I finally read the whole thing yesterday. This is, without a doubt, the best book about writing I've ever read. It is as important as it is brief. I would try to summarize it, but their isn't any nonessential material. Buy the book, or read some of the rules online (linked above), and live by it.

(I am working on a summary of How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler, and that should be done within a few days. Check back soon.)

Plummer in Wonderland

IT HAS BEEN RELEASED. Christopher Plummer reading Alice in Wonderland is quite possibly the best audiobook production ever created. Buy it on iTunes HERE.

Suburbia's Coddled Kids

Found this at Sam Weller's bookstore in Salt Lake City. It looks to be good. The synopsis reads:

"If we were once a melting pot," writes Peter Wyden, "we are no longer. The ingredients in the pot are separating and congealing . . . More and more kids come to know only their neatly manicured, fumeless, comfortably monotonous bedroom communities where there are almost no old people, no poor, no childless, no Negroes, either no Jewish families or many, no sidewalks, no places to explore except by mother-chauffeured car, no houses or incomes too different from those of their parents."

And the best part: This book was published in 1962.

Not-Wonderful

Do you think I'm wonderful? she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple.

No, he said.

Why?

Because so many girls are wonderful. I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today, and it's only noon. You couldn't be something that hundreds of others are.

Are you saying that I am not-wonderful?

Yes, I am.

She fingered his dead arm. Do you think I am not-beautiful?

You are incredibly not-beautiful. You are the farthest possible thing from beautiful.

She unbuttoned his shirt.

Am I smart?

No. Of course not. I would never call you smart.

She kneeled to unbutton his pants.

Am I sexy?

No.

Funny?

You are not-funny.

Does that feel good?

No.

Do you like it?

No.

She unbuttoned her blouse. She leaned in against him.

Should I continue?

Jonathan Safran Foer

Everything is Illuminated

Orphaned Anything's

"the day starts with coffee, ends with coffee, revolves around coffee, no joke. i work at a local coffee shop called the 'bauhaus'. at first i thought it would be advantageous to work where i would be surrounded by psuedo-intelectuals like myself and we could dicuss deep and unexplored topics, feed off each others liberalness, and completely figure out the meaning of life, religion, lust, and thermodynamics. in no particular order."

- Stephen Christian, The Orphaned Anything's