More Calendar Related Excuses to Talk about Books
Today is Drop Everything And Read day, the first ever, and it's being celebrated on Beverly Cleary's birthday, because she invented the holiday in Ramona Quimby Age 8. If you are interested, you can read Ramona's own suggestions for how to spend the day here. It's been a long time since I've picked up any of these books, but hey, I'm always looking for an excuse to drop everything...
Link via ParentHacks.
posted by Zil @ 9:28 AM
1 Comments:
I think I accidentally celebrated this yesterday. I found myself at the public library, and I enjoyed the anonymity of it. I, too, could mutter to myself, chortle aloud in a sinister fashion, crumple paper bags, or briefly browse the current self-help section. And no one would know. And I was tempted. In any case, I picked up Anne Carson's 2005 Decreation. Asalad told me about Anne Carson a few months ago, so it wasn't completely random. But I didn't go into the library intending to find her. There aren't so many random moments like that anymore; I always have a list of books to read, and those on the list are very rarely edged out by the random. The chance find: that was always the promise of the library, before the library became associated with burden, obligation, procrastination. So, I'm hoping to cultivate, if one can, more chance.
Here are some sentences/lines culled from my flipping through pages;even though ripped from context, I think they are still forceful: ""Was it Ovid who said there is so much wind here stones go blank"; "What is a spouse? Will this one save me? Will this one keep me alive?" Or, perhaps most relevant and soon to be footnoted in my own work, "What is a quote? A quote (cognate with quota) is a cut, a section, a slice of someone else's orange. You suck the slice, toss the rind, skate away…"
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