Libraries aren’t in the real world, after all. They’re places apart, sanctuaries of pure thought.

Paul Auster (via picadorbookroom)

I wonder if Paul Auster has been to one recently, though.

Libraries have actually become, in the US at least, de facto homeless shelters and centers for the mentally ill, as well as a resource for those needing childcare as well as the unemployed seeking work. There’s now signs on some of them in New York barring people from bringing ‘large packages’ which basically means ‘homeless people cannot bring their life’s belongings in here’—but they allowed it for almost a decade as homelessness in New York reached epic proportions. There’s actually very few places in American life so of this world, more than a library. Most public libraries are where you can see what is really going on for most Americans in a way you won’t ever see on the news or in a television show, or even in most fiction or nonfiction. And it is to the credit of most librarians that they continue to operate, despite budget cuts, the outlandish depravity of austerians and privitization mongrels. So, let’s not treat libraries like delicate flowers or temples withdrawn from the concerns of the world. They’ve shown themselves to be much tougher than that. Let’s instead make them what they should be, a better thing than what they’ve had to become—and look to what has been laid at their feet as a map to what our country really needs from its government services.

(via alexanderchee)

Alexander Chee, telling it like it is.

(via libraryjournal)

(via libraryjournal)

Source: picadorbookroom

J.K. Rowling | The Casual Vacancy

Fats was starting to think that if you flipped every bit of received wisdom on its head you would have the truth. He wanted to journey through dark labyrinths and wrestle with the strangeness that lurked withing; he wanted to crack open piety and expose hypocrisy; he wanted to break taboos and squeeze wisdom from their bloody hearts; he wanted to achieve a state of amoral grace, and be baptized backwards into ignorance and simplicity.

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hiddleswiggles: darthfar: elderjulietvictoireholmes: laconicllama: zarggg: env0: aisleylikeszebras: To me, this post might be just as important as the bible. One of my classes. My elderly teacher taught us this because he really cared about books. Why does no one teach us these things anymore? I get so uppity when someone breaks the binding on my books. I’m just a terrible person and the first thing I do with big books is break the binding. This needs to be reblogged. Just in case this manages to reach someone who might in the future borrow a book of mine, and who might otherwise bring my wrath down upon them by mistreating said book. Also important not to pull on the top of the spine when taking a books off a shelf since it can crack off.
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hiddleswiggles:

darthfar:

elderjulietvictoireholmes:

laconicllama:

zarggg:

env0:

aisleylikeszebras:

To me, this post might be just as important as the bible.

One of my classes. My elderly teacher taught us this because he really cared about books.

Why does no one teach us these things anymore?

I get so uppity when someone breaks the binding on my books.

I’m just a terrible person and the first thing I do with big books is break the binding.

This needs to be reblogged. Just in case this manages to reach someone who might in the future borrow a book of mine, and who might otherwise bring my wrath down upon them by mistreating said book.

Also important not to pull on the top of the spine when taking a books off a shelf since it can crack off.

(via uispeccoll)

Source: maloriebrooke

Things (Other?) Feminists Have Called Camille Paglia And Her Work and Things Camille Paglia Has Called (Other?) Feminists And Their Work

100yearsoflolitude:

“a drone in three years”, “just junk – appalling!”, “the repressive, Stalinist style in feminist criticism”, “smug, arrogant”, “painfully limited in processes of thought”, “PC diva”, “Perhaps the most conspicuous target of feminist opprobrium”, “crackpot extremism”, “an apologia for a new post-Cold War fascism”, “patriarchy’s counter-assault on feminism”, “the nipple-pierced person’s Phyllis Schlafly who poses as a sexual renegade but is in fact the most dutiful of patriarchal daughters”, “full of howling intellectual dishonesty”, “Her calling herself a feminist is sort of like a Nazi saying they’re not anti-Semitic.”, “the Stalin of feminism.”, “[Part of] a seemingly endless parade of social critics [who] have achieved celebrity by portraying not sexism but feminism as the problem”, “glorifier of male dominance”, “twit.”

(via doskapozora)

Source: 100yearsoflolitude

erikkwakkel: Medieval computer This is a volvelle, a medieval device that allowed you to calculate the phases of the moon and the latter’s position in relation to the sun. The dials, with their charming depictions of moon and sun, tell you what you need to know. What’s most remarkable about the device is not so much its crafty nature - it consists of complex layers of rotating disks - but that it is usually fitted inside a medieval book. Some are so bulky that they pierce the adjacent pages. What a surprise it must have been for the medieval reader who thumbed through such a book for the first time. Turning a page, he or she was confronted with an ingenious piece of machinery. A medieval computer. Pic (BL): London, British Library, Egerton MS 848 (15th century). More information about the manuscript here.
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erikkwakkel:

Medieval computer

This is a volvelle, a medieval device that allowed you to calculate the phases of the moon and the latter’s position in relation to the sun. The dials, with their charming depictions of moon and sun, tell you what you need to know. What’s most remarkable about the device is not so much its crafty nature - it consists of complex layers of rotating disks - but that it is usually fitted inside a medieval book. Some are so bulky that they pierce the adjacent pages. What a surprise it must have been for the medieval reader who thumbed through such a book for the first time. Turning a page, he or she was confronted with an ingenious piece of machinery. A medieval computer.

Pic (BL): London, British Library, Egerton MS 848 (15th century). More information about the manuscript here.

(via messier51)

Source: erikkwakkel