eastcoastjoe
Well-known member
That’s a great chapter. You should re-read 10-20 and pay close attention to 18-20. Then think really hard about how that applies to what we have been talking about.
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That’s a great chapter. You should re-read 10-20 and pay close attention to 18-20. Then think really hard about how that applies to what we have been talking about.
Eltitoguay
Well-known member
(Note: Google Translation)
HOW I GOT RID OF FIVE HUNDRED BOOKS :
Poet: Don't give away your book; destroy it yourself.
Eduardo Torres
Several years ago I read an essay by an English author, I don't remember, in which he recounted the difficulties he had in getting rid of a package of books that he had no intention of keeping in his library. However, in the course of my life I have noticed that it is common to hear intellectuals complain that books end up driving them out of their homes. Some even justify the size of their stately mansions with the excuse that the books no longer let them step into their old apartments.
I have not been, and probably never will be, in this last extreme; but I could never have imagined that one day I would find myself in that of the English essayist, and that I would have to struggle to part with five hundred volumes.
I will try to tell my experience. In passing, I will say that this story will probably irritate many people. It doesn't matter. The truth is that at a certain point in your life, either you know too many people (writers), or you are known by too many people (writers), or you realize that you have been forced to live in an era in which too many books are published. The time comes when your writer friends give you so many books (apart from the ones they generously give you to read that are still unpublished) that you would need to spend every day of the year just to find out about their interpretations of the world and life. As if this were not enough, the fact is that for twenty years my love of reading has been contaminated by the habit of buying books, a habit that in many cases ends up sadly being confused with the first.
At that time, I made the foolish mistake of visiting second-hand bookshops. On the first page of Moby Dick, Ishmael notes that when Caton grew tired of living, he committed suicide by throwing himself on his sword, and that when he became tired of it, he simply took a boat. I, on the other hand, for years took the path of second-hand bookshops. When one begins to feel the attraction of these establishments full of dust and spiritual penury, the pleasure that books provide has begun to degenerate into the mania of buying them, and this in turn into the vanity of acquiring some rare ones to astonish friends or mere acquaintances.
How does this process take place? One day you are quietly reading at home when a friend comes and says to you: "You have so many books!" This sounds to you as if the friend were saying: "You are so clever!" and the damage is done. The rest is well known. You start counting books by the hundreds, then by the thousands, and you feel more and more intelligent. As the years go by (unless you are a truly unfortunate idealist) you have more financial means, you have visited more bookstores and, naturally, you have become a writer, you own such a large number of books that you are no longer just clever: deep down you are a genius. Such is the vanity of owning many books.
In such a situation, the other day I plucked up courage and decided to keep only those books that really interest me, whether I had read them or were actually going to read them. While he is consuming his share of life, how many truths does a human being avoid? Among these, is not that of his cowardice one of the most constant? How many sophisms do you resort to daily to hide from yourself that you are a coward? I am a coward. Of the several thousand books that I possess by inertia, I only dared to eliminate about five hundred, and that with pain, not because of what they represented to me spiritually, but because of the lower prestige coefficient that the ten meters less of full shelves would mean.
Day and night my eyes ran over and over (as the classics used to say) the vast rows, discriminating until exhaustion (as we moderns say). What an incredible amount of poetry, what a quantity of novels, what a number of sociological solutions to the ills of the world! Poetry is supposed to be written to enrich the spirit; novels are supposed to be conceived, at the very least, for distraction; and even, optimistically, sociological solutions are aimed at solving something.
Looking at it calmly, I realized that for the most part the first, that is, poetry, was capable of impoverishing the richest spirit, the second of boring the most cheerful, and the third of confusing the most lucid. And yet, what considerations did I make to discard any volume, no matter how insignificant it seemed? If a priest and a barber had helped me without my knowing it, would they have left more than a hundred on my shelves? When in 1955 I visited Pablo Neruda in his house in Santiago, I was surprised to see that he barely owned thirty or forty books, including detective novels and translations of his own works into various languages. He had just donated to the university an enormous quantity of true bibliographical treasures. The poet indulged himself in this pleasure during his lifetime; the only state, when one can indulge himself, when he is alive.
I won't list the books I was prepared to part with here, but there was a bit of everything, more or less like this: politics (in the bad sense of the word, since there is no other), about 50; sociology and economics, about 49; general geography and general history, 3; geography and national history, 48; world literature, 14; Hispanic American literature, 86; American studies on Latin American literature, 37; astronomy, 1; theories of rhythm (so that the lady doesn't get pregnant), 6; methods for discovering springs, 1; biographies of opera singers, 1; indefinite genres (like I chose freedom), 14; eroticism, ½ (I kept the illustrations of the only one I had); methods for losing weight, 1; methods for stopping drinking, 19; psychology and psychoanalysis, 27; grammars, 5; methods for speaking English in ten days, 1; methods to speak French in ten days, 1; methods to speak Italian in ten days, 1; film studies, 8; etc.
But this was only the beginning. I soon discovered that few people were willing to accept the bulk of the books I had so carefully purchased over the years, wasting time and money. While this somewhat reconciled me to the human race, in discovering that the mere urge to accumulate was not such a widespread aberration, it caused me consequent inconvenience, for once I had decided to do so, getting rid of these books became a pressing spiritual necessity. A fire like that at the Library of Alexandria, to which these memoirs are dedicated, is the easiest way out, but it is ridiculous and even frowned upon to burn five hundred books in the courtyard of one's house (supposing that one had one). And it is accepted that the Inquisition burned people, but most people are indignant that it burned books. Some people who are fond of such things suggested that I give all these volumes to certain public libraries, and that I should give them to a certain library. But such an easy solution took away the adventurous spirit of the matter and the idea bored me a little, and I was convinced that in public libraries they would be as useless as in my home or anywhere else.
Throwing them one by one into the garbage was not worthy of me, of books, or of the garbage dump. The only solution was my friends. But my friends, politicians or sociologists, already possessed the books corresponding to their specialties, or were in many cases enemies of them; the poets did not want to be contaminated by anything from their contemporaries whom they knew personally; and the book on eroticism was a burden for anyone, even stripped of its French illustrations.
However, I do not want to turn these memories into a story of false adventures that are supposedly fun. The truth is that somehow I have found kindred spirits who have agreed to take these fetishes home with them, to occupy a place that will take away space and oxygen from the children, but which will give the parents the feeling of being the custodians of a knowledge that in any case is nothing more than the repeated testimony of human ignorance or naivety.
My optimism led me to suppose that, by the end of these lines, begun fifteen days ago, I would in some way fully justify its title; if the number of five hundred that appears in it is replaced by the number of twenty (which is beginning to be shortened due to one or another return by mail), this title will be closer to reality.
AUGUSTO MONTERROSO
MONTERROSO: CÓMO ME DESHICE DE QUINIENTOS LIBROS
Poeta: no regales tu libro, destrúyelo tu mismo. Eduardo Torres Hace varios años leí un ensayo de no recuerdo qué autor inglés en el que éste contaba las dificultades que se le presentaron p…
ovejasmuertas.wordpress.com
Last edited:
(Note: Google Translation)
HOW I GOT RID OF FIVE HUNDRED BOOKS :
Poet: Don't give away your book; destroy it yourself.
Eduardo Torres
Several years ago I read an essay by an English author, I don't remember, in which he recounted the difficulties he had in getting rid of a package of books that he had no intention of keeping in his library. However, in the course of my life I have noticed that it is common to hear intellectuals complain that books end up driving them out of their homes. Some even justify the size of their stately mansions with the excuse that the books no longer let them step into their old apartments.
I have not been, and probably never will be, in this last extreme; but I could never have imagined that one day I would find myself in that of the English essayist, and that I would have to struggle to part with five hundred volumes.
I will try to tell my experience. In passing, I will say that this story will probably irritate many people. It doesn't matter. The truth is that at a certain point in your life, either you know too many people (writers), or you are known by too many people (writers), or you realize that you have been forced to live in an era in which too many books are published. The time comes when your writer friends give you so many books (apart from the ones they generously give you to read that are still unpublished) that you would need to spend every day of the year just to find out about their interpretations of the world and life. As if this were not enough, the fact is that for twenty years my love of reading has been contaminated by the habit of buying books, a habit that in many cases ends up sadly being confused with the first.
At that time, I made the foolish mistake of visiting second-hand bookshops. On the first page of Moby Dick, Ishmael notes that when Caton grew tired of living, he committed suicide by throwing himself on his sword, and that when he became tired of it, he simply took a boat. I, on the other hand, for years took the path of second-hand bookshops. When one begins to feel the attraction of these establishments full of dust and spiritual penury, the pleasure that books provide has begun to degenerate into the mania of buying them, and this in turn into the vanity of acquiring some rare ones to astonish friends or mere acquaintances.
How does this process take place? One day you are quietly reading at home when a friend comes and says to you: "You have so many books!" This sounds to you as if the friend were saying: "You are so clever!" and the damage is done. The rest is well known. You start counting books by the hundreds, then by the thousands, and you feel more and more intelligent. As the years go by (unless you are a truly unfortunate idealist) you have more financial means, you have visited more bookstores and, naturally, you have become a writer, you own such a large number of books that you are no longer just clever: deep down you are a genius. Such is the vanity of owning many books.
In such a situation, the other day I plucked up courage and decided to keep only those books that really interest me, whether I had read them or were actually going to read them. While he is consuming his share of life, how many truths does a human being avoid? Among these, is not that of his cowardice one of the most constant? How many sophisms do you resort to daily to hide from yourself that you are a coward? I am a coward. Of the several thousand books that I possess by inertia, I only dared to eliminate about five hundred, and that with pain, not because of what they represented to me spiritually, but because of the lower prestige coefficient that the ten meters less of full shelves would mean.
Day and night my eyes ran over and over (as the classics used to say) the vast rows, discriminating until exhaustion (as we moderns say). What an incredible amount of poetry, what a quantity of novels, what a number of sociological solutions to the ills of the world! Poetry is supposed to be written to enrich the spirit; novels are supposed to be conceived, at the very least, for distraction; and even, optimistically, sociological solutions are aimed at solving something.
Looking at it calmly, I realized that for the most part the first, that is, poetry, was capable of impoverishing the richest spirit, the second of boring the most cheerful, and the third of confusing the most lucid. And yet, what considerations did I make to discard any volume, no matter how insignificant it seemed? If a priest and a barber had helped me without my knowing it, would they have left more than a hundred on my shelves? When in 1955 I visited Pablo Neruda in his house in Santiago, I was surprised to see that he barely owned thirty or forty books, including detective novels and translations of his own works into various languages. He had just donated to the university an enormous quantity of true bibliographical treasures. The poet indulged himself in this pleasure during his lifetime; the only state, when one can indulge himself, when he is alive.
I won't list the books I was prepared to part with here, but there was a bit of everything, more or less like this: politics (in the bad sense of the word, since there is no other), about 50; sociology and economics, about 49; general geography and general history, 3; geography and national history, 48; world literature, 14; Hispanic American literature, 86; American studies on Latin American literature, 37; astronomy, 1; theories of rhythm (so that the lady doesn't get pregnant), 6; methods for discovering springs, 1; biographies of opera singers, 1; indefinite genres (like I chose freedom), 14; eroticism, ½ (I kept the illustrations of the only one I had); methods for losing weight, 1; methods for stopping drinking, 19; psychology and psychoanalysis, 27; grammars, 5; methods for speaking English in ten days, 1; methods to speak French in ten days, 1; methods to speak Italian in ten days, 1; film studies, 8; etc.
But this was only the beginning. I soon discovered that few people were willing to accept the bulk of the books I had so carefully purchased over the years, wasting time and money. While this somewhat reconciled me to the human race, in discovering that the mere urge to accumulate was not such a widespread aberration, it caused me consequent inconvenience, for once I had decided to do so, getting rid of these books became a pressing spiritual necessity. A fire like that at the Library of Alexandria, to which these memoirs are dedicated, is the easiest way out, but it is ridiculous and even frowned upon to burn five hundred books in the courtyard of one's house (supposing that one had one). And it is accepted that the Inquisition burned people, but most people are indignant that it burned books. Some people who are fond of such things suggested that I give all these volumes to certain public libraries, and that I should give them to a certain library. But such an easy solution took away the adventurous spirit of the matter and the idea bored me a little, and I was convinced that in public libraries they would be as useless as in my home or anywhere else.
Throwing them one by one into the garbage was not worthy of me, of books, or of the garbage dump. The only solution was my friends. But my friends, politicians or sociologists, already possessed the books corresponding to their specialties, or were in many cases enemies of them; the poets did not want to be contaminated by anything from their contemporaries whom they knew personally; and the book on eroticism was a burden for anyone, even stripped of its French illustrations.
However, I do not want to turn these memories into a story of false adventures that are supposedly fun. The truth is that somehow I have found kindred spirits who have agreed to take these fetishes home with them, to occupy a place that will take away space and oxygen from the children, but which will give the parents the feeling of being the custodians of a knowledge that in any case is nothing more than the repeated testimony of human ignorance or naivety.
My optimism led me to suppose that, by the end of these lines, begun fifteen days ago, I would in some way fully justify its title; if the number of five hundred that appears in it is replaced by the number of twenty (which is beginning to be shortened due to one or another return by mail), this title will be closer to reality.
AUGUSTO MONTERROSO
MONTERROSO: CÓMO ME DESHICE DE QUINIENTOS LIBROS
Poeta: no regales tu libro, destrúyelo tu mismo. Eduardo Torres Hace varios años leí un ensayo de no recuerdo qué autor inglés en el que éste contaba las dificultades que se le presentaron p…
These ARE the books I want to keep around. There's no picture of Time-Life's 'The Civil War' set, but that WW11 set cost $250+. Since the jail doesn't take books any more, I've hit the used book-store, have a couple hundred dollars in credit. I took back The Dresden Files by Butcher, the MHI's by Larry Correia, etc...cause I didn't have room.
For those folks talking the Bible, unless you are reading the OT in Hebrew and the NT in Greek/Latin, you're missing some subtle nuances. The reason there is a Catholic Church and an Orthodox is the translation of a Greek preposition, is Jesus 'of the Father' or 'from the Father'?
History of the filioque controversy - Wikipedia
But this is a BOOK thread, not religion/philosophy. Maybe try 'The Silmarillion' ?
peace
Eltitoguay
Well-known member
Augusto Monterroso is being ironic...: Surely the shelves of his bookcases were even more warped than mine...These ARE the books I want to keep around. There's no picture of Time-Life's 'The Civil War' set, but that WW11 set cost $250+. Since the jail doesn't take books any more, I've hit the used book-store, have a couple hundred dollars in credit. I took back The Dresden Files by Butcher, the MHI's by Larry Correia, etc...cause I didn't have room.
For those folks talking the Bible, unless you are reading the OT in Hebrew and the NT in Greek/Latin, you're missing some subtle nuances. The reason there is a Catholic Church and an Orthodox is the translation of a Greek preposition, is Jesus 'of the Father' or 'from the Father'?
History of the filioque controversy - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
But this is a BOOK thread, not religion/philosophy. Maybe try 'The Silmarillion' ?
peace
A bit of Gabriel García Marquez:
Light is like water :
At Christmas the children again asked for a rowboat.-Okay -said the father, we will buy it when we return to Cartagena.
Nine-year-old Toto and seven-year-old Joel were more determined than their parents thought.
"No," they said in chorus, "We need him here and now."
-To begin with -said the mother-, there is no navigable water here other than that which comes out of the shower.
Both she and her husband were right. In the house in Cartagena de Indias there was a patio with a dock on the bay, and a shelter for two large yachts. Here in Madrid, however, they lived cramped on the fifth floor of number 47 Paseo de la Castellana. But in the end neither he nor she could refuse, because they had been promised a rowboat with its sextant and compass if they won the third-grade laurel, and they had won it. So the father bought everything without telling his wife, who was the most reluctant to pay gambling debts. It was a beautiful aluminum boat with a gold thread on the waterline.
"The boat is in the garage," the father revealed at lunch. "The problem is that there is no way to get it up either by elevator or by stairs, and there is no more space available in the garage."
However, the following Saturday afternoon the children invited their classmates to carry the boat up the stairs, and they managed to take it to the utility room.
-Congratulations -the father told them- ...now what?
"Nothing now," said the children. "All we wanted was to have the boat in the room, and that's it."
On Wednesday night, like every Wednesday, the parents went to the movies. The children, masters and lords of the house, closed the doors and windows, and broke the light bulb of a lamp in the living room. A stream of golden light, as cool as water, began to flow out of the broken bulb, and they let it run until the level reached four palms. Then they cut the current, took out the boat, and sailed at their leisure among the islands of the house.
This fabulous adventure was the result of a thoughtless act on my part while taking part in a seminar on the poetry of household utensils. Totó asked me how the light came on by simply pressing a button, and I didn't have the courage to think twice.
-Light is like water - I answered: -you open the tap and it comes out.
So they continued sailing on Wednesday nights, learning how to use the sextant and compass, until their parents came home from the cinema and found them fast asleep. Months later, eager to go further afield, they asked for underwater fishing gear. With everything: masks, fins, tanks and air rifles.
"It's bad that they have a useless rowboat in the utility room," said the father. "But it's worse that they want to have diving equipment as well."
-What if we win the golden gardenia for the first semester? -said Joel.
"No," said the mother, frightened, "No more."
The father reproached him for his intransigence.
"These children don't earn a penny for doing their duty," she said, "but on a whim they are capable of earning themselves the teacher's chair."
The parents did not say yes or no in the end. But Toto and Joel, who had been the last in the previous two years, won the two golden gardenias and the public recognition of the principal in July. That same afternoon, without having asked for them again, they found the diving equipment in its original packaging in the bedroom. So the following Wednesday, while the parents were watching Last Tango in Paris , they filled the apartment to a depth of two fathoms, dived like gentle sharks under the furniture and beds, and rescued from the depths of the light the things that had been lost in the darkness for years.
At the final awards ceremony the brothers were hailed as an example for the school and were given certificates of excellence. This time they did not have to ask for anything, because their parents asked them what they wanted. They were so reasonable that they only wanted a party at home to entertain their classmates.
The father, alone with his wife, was radiant.
"It's a test of maturity," he said.
-God hear you -said the mother.
The following Wednesday, while the parents were watching The Battle of Algiers , people passing by Castellana Avenue saw a cascade of light falling from an old building hidden among the trees. It came out through the balconies, poured down the façade, and flowed down the great avenue in a golden torrent that illuminated the city as far as the Guadarrama.
Called urgently, the firemen forced open the door on the fifth floor and found the house filled with light up to the ceiling. The sofa and the leopard-skin armchairs floated in the living room at different levels, between the bottles from the bar and the grand piano and its Manila shawl that fluttered in the water like a golden manta ray. The household utensils, in the fullness of their poetry, flew with their own wings across the kitchen ceiling. The instruments of the marching band, which the children used to dance, floated adrift among the goldfish released from Mom's fish tank, which were the only ones floating alive and happy in the vast illuminated swamp. In the bathroom floated everyone's toothbrushes, Dad's condoms, the cream jars and Mom's spare teeth, and the television in the master bedroom floated on its side, still on the last episode of the midnight movie forbidden to children.
At the end of the corridor, floating between two waters, Toto was sitting in the stern of the boat, holding on to the oars and wearing his mask, searching for the lighthouse in the port as far as the air in the tanks could reach, and Joel was floating in the bow still searching for the height of the North Star with the sextant, and his thirty-seven classmates were floating all over the house, eternalized in the moment of peeing in the pot of geraniums, of singing the school anthem with the lyrics changed to verses mocking the principal, of secretly drinking a glass of brandy from Dad's bottle. For so many lights had been turned on at the same time that the house had overflowed, and the entire fourth grade of the San Julián el Hospitalario School had drowned on the fifth floor of number 47 Paseo de la Castellana.
In Madrid, inland Spain, a remote city with burning summers and dry winds, without sea or river, and whose aborigines from the mainland were never masters in the science of navigating in the light.
END.
La luz es como el agua
En Navidad los niños volvieron a pedir un bote de remos. -De acuerdo -dijo el papá, lo compraremos cuando volvamos a Cartagena. Totó, de nueve años, y Joel, de siete, estaban más decididos de lo que sus padres creían. -No -dijeron a coro-. Nos hace falta ahora y aquí. -Para empezar -dijo la...
ciudadseva.com
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TLDR
Eltitoguay
Well-known member
Augusto Monterroso was a great admirer, among others, of Franz Kafka (me too):
I had a dream.
We were in Paris participating in the World Congress of Writers. After the last session, on June 5, Alfredo Bryce Echenique had invited Julio Ramón Ribeyro, Miguel Rojas-Mix, Franz Kafka, Bárbara Jacobs and me to dinner at his apartment at 8 bis, 2nd floor left, rue Amyot. As in any big city, in Paris there are streets that are difficult to find; but rue Amyot is easy if you get off at the Monge Metro station and then, as best you can, ask for rue Amyot.
At ten o'clock at night, still sunny, we were all gathered together, except Franz, who had said that before arriving he would stop by to pick up a turtle that he wanted to give me as a souvenir of how quickly the Congress had gone.
At about a quarter past eleven he called to say he was at the Saint Germain de Prés station and asked if Monge was going to Fort d'Aubervilliers or Mairie d'Ivry. He added that on second thought it would have been better to take a taxi. At twelve he called again to say that he had already left Monge but that he had taken the wrong exit first and had had to climb 93 steps to find at the end that the folding iron gates leading to Navarre Street had been closed since eight-thirty, but that he had retraced his steps to get out by the escalator and that he was already with the turtle, which he was giving water to in a café three blocks away from us. We were drinking wine, whisky, Coca-Cola and Perrier.
At one o'clock he called to ask for our forgiveness, that he had been knocking at number 8 and that no one had answered, that the phone he was talking about was a block away and that he had already realised that the house number was not 8 but 8 bis.
At two o'clock the doorbell rang. Bryce's neighbour, who lives on the same second floor, right, not left, said in a dressing gown and with some alarm that a few minutes earlier a man had knocked insistently on his flat; that when he finally opened it, that man, no doubt sorry for his mistake and for having made him get up, made up a story about a turtle in the street; that he had said he was going to get it, and that we knew him.
enfrascopequeno.blogspot.com
The dinner :
I had a dream.
We were in Paris participating in the World Congress of Writers. After the last session, on June 5, Alfredo Bryce Echenique had invited Julio Ramón Ribeyro, Miguel Rojas-Mix, Franz Kafka, Bárbara Jacobs and me to dinner at his apartment at 8 bis, 2nd floor left, rue Amyot. As in any big city, in Paris there are streets that are difficult to find; but rue Amyot is easy if you get off at the Monge Metro station and then, as best you can, ask for rue Amyot.
At ten o'clock at night, still sunny, we were all gathered together, except Franz, who had said that before arriving he would stop by to pick up a turtle that he wanted to give me as a souvenir of how quickly the Congress had gone.
At about a quarter past eleven he called to say he was at the Saint Germain de Prés station and asked if Monge was going to Fort d'Aubervilliers or Mairie d'Ivry. He added that on second thought it would have been better to take a taxi. At twelve he called again to say that he had already left Monge but that he had taken the wrong exit first and had had to climb 93 steps to find at the end that the folding iron gates leading to Navarre Street had been closed since eight-thirty, but that he had retraced his steps to get out by the escalator and that he was already with the turtle, which he was giving water to in a café three blocks away from us. We were drinking wine, whisky, Coca-Cola and Perrier.
At one o'clock he called to ask for our forgiveness, that he had been knocking at number 8 and that no one had answered, that the phone he was talking about was a block away and that he had already realised that the house number was not 8 but 8 bis.
At two o'clock the doorbell rang. Bryce's neighbour, who lives on the same second floor, right, not left, said in a dressing gown and with some alarm that a few minutes earlier a man had knocked insistently on his flat; that when he finally opened it, that man, no doubt sorry for his mistake and for having made him get up, made up a story about a turtle in the street; that he had said he was going to get it, and that we knew him.
Augusto Monterroso.
La cena. Augusto Monterroso.
Blog de cuentos y microrrelatos. Bitácora literaria. Microrrelatos, microcuentos, relatos breves, tuiteratura.
enfrascopequeno.blogspot.com
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Again TLDR, unless, you are writing these from memory.
How would you like it if I quoted LONG passages from 'Blood Meridian' or Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall...'? Just read the books, eh?
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hello mean mr.mustard, the first step its admitting you need help
weve all been there, reading discarded pamphlets in the gutter and scrounging for books in the local book box
/do they have those where you live where people will just give away books?
there is always hope
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I used to trade in and out of used book stores.
I have three used bookstores for my fill..
No exchange anymore... that's outdated I suppose.
I have less than adequate time for reading these days.
There's collection of homesteading families, old and new, that are fascinating to delve into.
Hasch
learning and laughing
Thank you for the magic, I loved itAugusto Monterroso is being ironic...: Surely the shelves of his bookcases were even more warped than mine...
A bit of Gabriel García Marquez:
Light is like water :
At Christmas the children again asked for a rowboat.
-Okay -said the father, we will buy it when we return to Cartagena.
Nine-year-old Toto and seven-year-old Joel were more determined than their parents thought.
"No," they said in chorus, "We need him here and now."
-To begin with -said the mother-, there is no navigable water here other than that which comes out of the shower.
Both she and her husband were right. In the house in Cartagena de Indias there was a patio with a dock on the bay, and a shelter for two large yachts. Here in Madrid, however, they lived cramped on the fifth floor of number 47 Paseo de la Castellana. But in the end neither he nor she could refuse, because they had been promised a rowboat with its sextant and compass if they won the third-grade laurel, and they had won it. So the father bought everything without telling his wife, who was the most reluctant to pay gambling debts. It was a beautiful aluminum boat with a gold thread on the waterline.
"The boat is in the garage," the father revealed at lunch. "The problem is that there is no way to get it up either by elevator or by stairs, and there is no more space available in the garage."
However, the following Saturday afternoon the children invited their classmates to carry the boat up the stairs, and they managed to take it to the utility room.
-Congratulations -the father told them- ...now what?
"Nothing now," said the children. "All we wanted was to have the boat in the room, and that's it."
On Wednesday night, like every Wednesday, the parents went to the movies. The children, masters and lords of the house, closed the doors and windows, and broke the light bulb of a lamp in the living room. A stream of golden light, as cool as water, began to flow out of the broken bulb, and they let it run until the level reached four palms. Then they cut the current, took out the boat, and sailed at their leisure among the islands of the house.
This fabulous adventure was the result of a thoughtless act on my part while taking part in a seminar on the poetry of household utensils. Totó asked me how the light came on by simply pressing a button, and I didn't have the courage to think twice.
-Light is like water - I answered: -you open the tap and it comes out.
So they continued sailing on Wednesday nights, learning how to use the sextant and compass, until their parents came home from the cinema and found them fast asleep. Months later, eager to go further afield, they asked for underwater fishing gear. With everything: masks, fins, tanks and air rifles.
"It's bad that they have a useless rowboat in the utility room," said the father. "But it's worse that they want to have diving equipment as well."
-What if we win the golden gardenia for the first semester? -said Joel.
"No," said the mother, frightened, "No more."
The father reproached him for his intransigence.
"These children don't earn a penny for doing their duty," she said, "but on a whim they are capable of earning themselves the teacher's chair."
The parents did not say yes or no in the end. But Toto and Joel, who had been the last in the previous two years, won the two golden gardenias and the public recognition of the principal in July. That same afternoon, without having asked for them again, they found the diving equipment in its original packaging in the bedroom. So the following Wednesday, while the parents were watching Last Tango in Paris , they filled the apartment to a depth of two fathoms, dived like gentle sharks under the furniture and beds, and rescued from the depths of the light the things that had been lost in the darkness for years.
At the final awards ceremony the brothers were hailed as an example for the school and were given certificates of excellence. This time they did not have to ask for anything, because their parents asked them what they wanted. They were so reasonable that they only wanted a party at home to entertain their classmates.
The father, alone with his wife, was radiant.
"It's a test of maturity," he said.
-God hear you -said the mother.
The following Wednesday, while the parents were watching The Battle of Algiers , people passing by Castellana Avenue saw a cascade of light falling from an old building hidden among the trees. It came out through the balconies, poured down the façade, and flowed down the great avenue in a golden torrent that illuminated the city as far as the Guadarrama.
Called urgently, the firemen forced open the door on the fifth floor and found the house filled with light up to the ceiling. The sofa and the leopard-skin armchairs floated in the living room at different levels, between the bottles from the bar and the grand piano and its Manila shawl that fluttered in the water like a golden manta ray. The household utensils, in the fullness of their poetry, flew with their own wings across the kitchen ceiling. The instruments of the marching band, which the children used to dance, floated adrift among the goldfish released from Mom's fish tank, which were the only ones floating alive and happy in the vast illuminated swamp. In the bathroom floated everyone's toothbrushes, Dad's condoms, the cream jars and Mom's spare teeth, and the television in the master bedroom floated on its side, still on the last episode of the midnight movie forbidden to children.
At the end of the corridor, floating between two waters, Toto was sitting in the stern of the boat, holding on to the oars and wearing his mask, searching for the lighthouse in the port as far as the air in the tanks could reach, and Joel was floating in the bow still searching for the height of the North Star with the sextant, and his thirty-seven classmates were floating all over the house, eternalized in the moment of peeing in the pot of geraniums, of singing the school anthem with the lyrics changed to verses mocking the principal, of secretly drinking a glass of brandy from Dad's bottle. For so many lights had been turned on at the same time that the house had overflowed, and the entire fourth grade of the San Julián el Hospitalario School had drowned on the fifth floor of number 47 Paseo de la Castellana.
In Madrid, inland Spain, a remote city with burning summers and dry winds, without sea or river, and whose aborigines from the mainland were never masters in the science of navigating in the light.
END.
La luz es como el agua
En Navidad los niños volvieron a pedir un bote de remos. -De acuerdo -dijo el papá, lo compraremos cuando volvamos a Cartagena. Totó, de nueve años, y Joel, de siete, estaban más decididos de lo que sus padres creían. -No -dijeron a coro-. Nos hace falta ahora y aquí. -Para empezar -dijo la...
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Used to have a really boring night job, and read a lot just to keep awake. But, even beyond that, could read a couple of books a week. Now the eyes are pretty bad.
Only found one other person that remembers "Still Life with Woodpecker". I read that many years ago, and I still laugh at some of it. You might have to be old enough to remember the first personal word processors to 'get' some of it. Read a lot of Stephan King, and tons of SciFi. As far as 'serious' reading...Ralph Waldo Emerson, but i have to read that slowly and carefully.
Only found one other person that remembers "Still Life with Woodpecker". I read that many years ago, and I still laugh at some of it. You might have to be old enough to remember the first personal word processors to 'get' some of it. Read a lot of Stephan King, and tons of SciFi. As far as 'serious' reading...Ralph Waldo Emerson, but i have to read that slowly and carefully.
Hasch
learning and laughing
I'm using a Kindle because of that, especially when commuting. I just ramp up the font size and I'm golden
A Kindle here as well. And a free membership to the Toronto Public library for digital downloads.
My shtick is historical fiction although I will drift into real history as needed and while I do admit that as of late I have been consuming far too many swords and sandals time-wasters, authors like Hillary Mantel (Cromwell books) and the Colleen McCullough (Caesar series) are standouts and worth the effort.
velorex
Well-known member
Just moved in to a new place in carboneras Spain. First thing I saw in my room was a book about Ronnie Biggs. The most wanted man by Colin Mackenzie. Just finished it, really good. And my new landlord is the spitting image of Terry Pratchett. So inspired to revisit discworld. Also a shout-out to Spider Robinson, specially the Callahan books.
Tom Robbins is one of my favorite authors.
He wrote an autobiography called Tibetan Peach Pie or something like that.
It's an excellent read if you like his writing.
My favorite Robbins is Jitterbug Perfume
