Download or read book The Gutenberg Elegies written by Sven Birkerts and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2006-11-14 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[A] THOUGHTFUL AND HEARTFELT BOOK...A literary cri de coeur--a lament for literature and everything implicit in it." --The Washington Post In our zeal to embrace the wonders of the electronic age, are we sacrificing our literary culture? Renowned critic Sven Birkerts believes the answer is an alarming yes. In The Gutenberg Elegies, he explores the impact of technology on the experience of reading. Drawing on his own passionate, lifelong love of books, Birkerts examines how literature intimately shapes and nourishes the inner life. What does it mean to "hear" a book on audiotape, decipher its words on a screen, or interact with it on CD-ROM? Are books as we know them dead? At once a celebration of the complex pleasures of reading and a boldly original challenge to the new information technologies, The Gutenberg Elegies is an essential volume for anyone who cares about the past and future of books. "[A] wise and humane book....He is telling us, in short, nothing less than what reading means and why it matters." --The Boston Sunday Globe "Warmly elegiac...A candid and engaging autobiographical account sketches his own almost obsessive trajectory through avid childhood reading....This profoundly reflexive process is skillfully described." --The New York Times Book Review "Provocative...Compelling...Powerfully conveys why reading matters, why it is both a delight and a necessity." --The Harvard Review
Download or read book The Gutenberg Elegies written by Sven Birkerts and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1994 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author argues that we are living in a state of intellectual emergency, that is caused by our willingness to embrace new technologies at the expense of the printed word. In this case the author takes a stand on the side of the book.
Download or read book Fools of Fortune written by William Trevor and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-04-25 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Penguin Classics is proud to welcome William Trevor—"Ireland’s answer to Chekhov" (The Boston Globe) and "one of the best writers of our era" (The Washington Post)—to our distinguished list of literary masters. In this award-winning novel, an informer’s body is found on the estate of a wealthy Irish family shortly after the First World War, and an appalling cycle of revenge is set in motion. Led by a zealous sergeant, the Black and Tans set fire to the family home, and only young Willie and his mother escape alive. Fatherless, Willie grows into manhood while his alcoholic mother’s bitter resentment festers. And though he finds love, Willie is unable to leave the terrible injuries of the past behind. First time in Penguin Classics Winner of the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award
Download or read book The Other Walk written by Sven Birkerts and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Other Walk is a series of autobiographical pieces by the master of reflection and slow time Throughout his life, Sven Birkerts, one of the country's foremost literary critics, has carved out time for himself—to walk, to swim, to read, to contemplate. Now in his late fifties, he has clocked up many thousands of hours of reflection. It shows in his prose, which proceeds at a refreshingly deliberative pace as it draws the reader into his patterns and rhythms. In this deeply appealing and engaging collection of essays, Birkerts looks back through his own life, as well as at the generations before him, and ahead at the lives of his children. We read how the writer witnesses his son's frightening sailing accident, how he feels when he encounters his own prose from many years ago, how finding a cigarette lighter or a lost ring releases a cascade of memories. The objects he sees around him—old friends, remembered places—are excavated, their layers exposed. But most winning of all is the emerging character of Birkerts himself. We come to have great respect for this competitive but deeply loyal friend, the caring father who respects his children's independence even as he tries to connect with them, the traveler, the onetime bookseller, the writer at all stages of his writing life, and throughout it all, the attentive, passionate reader.
Download or read book Changing the Subject written by Sven Birkerts and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Birkerts "examines the changes that he has observed in himself and others [since allowing a degree of everyday digital technology into his life]: the distraction induced by reading on the screen; the loss of personal agency through reliance on GPS and one-stop information resources; an increasing acceptance of 'hive' behaviors. 'An unprecedented shift is underway,' he argues, and 'this transformation is dramatically accelerated and more psychologically formative than any previous technological innovation.' He finds solace in engagement with art, particularly literature, and contemplates the countering energies available to us through acts of sustained attention, even as he worries that our increasingly mediated existences are a threat to creativity"--Page 4 of cove
Download or read book By the Aurelian Wall and Other Elegies written by Bliss Carman and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2019-12-18 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of elegiac poems written by Bliss Carman. He was a Canadian poet who lived most of his life in the United States, where he achieved international fame. In his later years, he was acclaimed as Canada's poet laureate. In this volume of work, more than a dozen of his poems are featured, including the following: 'To Raphael', 'Seven Wind Songs', 'The White Gull', 'A Seamark', and 'A Word of the Water'.
Download or read book The Art of Time in Memoir written by Sven Birkerts and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Art Of series is a new line of books reinvigorating the practice of craft and criticism. Each book will be a brief, witty, and useful exploration of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry by a writer impassioned by a singular craft issue. The Art Of volumes will provide a series of sustained examinations of key but sometimes neglected aspects of creative writing by some of contemporary literature's finest practioners. In The Art of Time in Memoir, critic and memoirist Sven Birkerts examines the human impulse to write about the self. By examining memoirs such as Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory; Virginia Woolf's unfinished A Sketch of the Past; and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club, Birkerts describes the memoirist's essential art of assembling patterns of meaning, stirring to life our own sense of past and present.
Download or read book What We Talk About When We Talk About Books written by Leah Price and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reports of the death of reading are greatly exaggerated Do you worry that you've lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you're not alone. Digital-age pundits warn that as our appetite for books dwindles, so too do the virtues in which printed, bound objects once trained us: the willpower to focus on a sustained argument, the curiosity to look beyond the day's news, the willingness to be alone. The shelves of the world's great libraries, though, tell a more complicated story. Examining the wear and tear on the books that they contain, English professor Leah Price finds scant evidence that a golden age of reading ever existed. From the dawn of mass literacy to the invention of the paperback, most readers already skimmed and multitasked. Print-era doctors even forbade the very same silent absorption now recommended as a cure for electronic addictions. The evidence that books are dying proves even scarcer. In encounters with librarians, booksellers and activists who are reinventing old ways of reading, Price offers fresh hope to bibliophiles and literature lovers alike. Winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award, 2020
Download or read book A Passion for Books written by D. Salwak and published by Springer. This book was released on 1999-04-23 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading writers and critics, including Margaret Drabble, Alan Sillitoe and Ferdinand Mount, share their passion for books and the joys of reading in an inspiring collection of essays and writings. A Passion for Books is both a celebration of the value and importance of reading and a spirited defence against the many gloomy voices in our so-called electronic age who say the book will soon be obsolete. This book, itself a joy to read, is written for anyone who cares at all about the past and future of books and reading.
Download or read book The Elegies of Tibullus written by Tibullus and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-05-10 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Elegies of Tibullus" from Tibullus. Tibullus, latin poet and writer of elegies (55B.C.-19B.C.).
Download or read book My Sky Blue Trades written by Sven Birkerts and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 2003 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author of the widely acclaimed New York Times Notable Book, The Gutenberg Elegies, distinguished critic and essayist Birkerts explores in this brilliantly written memoir what it means to be an American with roots in a distant culture.
Download or read book An Artificial Wilderness written by Sven Birkerts and published by Boston, Mass. : D.R. Godine, Publisher. This book was released on 1990 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If recent fiction consisted exclusively of American postmodernists, modern literature would be in deep trouble, contends Birkerts. In this latest gathering of brilliant essays, he examines the decline of humanist faith, a theme that links an international community of writers.
Download or read book Books Condemned to be Burnt written by James Anson Farrer and published by London, E. Stock. This book was released on 1892 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Stalking the Divine written by Kristin Ohlson and published by Plume. This book was released on 2004-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One lonely Christmas morning, Kristin Ohlson wandered into a downtown Cleveland church for mass. Once there, she was moved by the traditions of her childhood, but more than that, her curiosity was captured by a group of cloistered nuns. They were the Poor Clares—a tiny, threadbare congregation of elderly nuns with one mission: to pray day and night for the sorrows of the world. As Ohlson, a longtime skeptic, opens up to the Poor Clares, she opens herself to the possibility of the sacred. The result is an inspiring personal journey as well as a poignant reflection on the power of church and faith.
Download or read book Read to Lead written by Jeff Brown and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's the common habit shared by many successful people throughout history. It's responsible for unlocking limitless creativity and influence. It's known to reduce stress, improve decision-making skills, and make you a better leader. What is it? Reading. And it's the single best thing you can do to improve yourself professionally. Reading more and better books creates opportunities for you to learn new skills, rise above your competition, and build a successful career. In Read to Lead you'll learn - why you need to read like your career depends on it - the five science-backed reasons reading will help you build your career - how to absorb a book into your bloodstream - a technique that can double (or triple!) your reading speed - tips on creating a lifetime reading habit - and more If you want to lead a more satisfied life, have more intelligent conversations, and broaden your mind, you need to read to lead!
Download or read book Outside Valentine written by Liza Ward and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A debut novelist interweaves a trio of voices--haunting, dangerous, full of longing--mysteriously linked by a shocking crime and the search to heal the past Many long years have passed since the winter of blinding white when Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate drove across the hushed midwestern landscape and left a trail of blood and pain. So why does Lowell, a Manhattan collector of antiquities, still dream of what happened, despite his wife's best attempts to draw him back and offer comfort? And who is Susan, the teenager who appoints herself a detective, piecing together the story of the murders while wondering if she'll ever be loved like Starkweather loved his girl? And then there's Caril Ann herself, who takes us back to relive the ride she swears she could not control. It began on the day Charlie first saw her, dangling her bare legs off the edge of a tree house. It ended outside Valentine, Nebraska, on that night when she still believed that life could somehow go back to being normal . . . ' Every so often a novel comes along that is capable of redeeming the losses it so devastatingly conveys. Disturbing, bittersweet, and lyrical, Liza Ward's Outside Valentine is a story of people torn apart by tragedy and yet, finally, transformed by love.
Download or read book A Passion for Books written by Harold Rabinowitz and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of sixty classic and contemporary essays, stories, lists, poems, quotations, and cartoons that celebrates the joys of reading, the feeling of spending hours browsing through a bookstore, and the people for whom buying books is a necessity. Booklovers will find themselves in good company within the pages of A Passion for Books, beginning with science-fiction great Ray Bradbury's foreword and throughout contributions like-- Umberto Eco's How to Justify a Private Library, dealing with the question everyone with a sizable library is inevitably asked: "Have you read all these books?"; Gustave Flaubert's Bibliomania, the tale of a book collector so obsessed with owning a book that he is willing to kill to possess it; and Anna Quindlen's How Reading Changed My Life, in which she shares her optimistic view on the role of reading and the future of books in the computer age. Interspersed throughout are entertaining lists--Ten Bestselling Books Rejected by Publishers Twenty Times or More, Norman Mailer's Ten Favorite American Novels and many more-- plus select writings on bookstores, book clubs, cartoons about books and a specially prepared "bibliobibliography" of books about books. Whether you consider yourself a bibliomaniac or just someone who enjoys reading, A Passion for Books will provide you with a lifetime's worth of entertaining, informative, and pleasurable reading on your favorite subject--the love of books.
