Should Book Titles Be In Quotes

Instead of a Lemonade Stand, I should open up a “You know what I can’t stand?” Stand. I’ll sell rants in small, medium, and large.

You should write a book," Matrick suggested. Kit snorted. "Who wants to read the self-pitying lamentations of an old revenant?" "There's your title right there," said Ganelon.

There should always be one more cat than person, so everyone has one to pet, and I have two to myself.

I object to that object that’s made of bronze and shaped like my clone. It should be made of gold, and shaped like me.

Jarod Kintz Day—it’s not just my birthday, but it should be a holiday that’s mandatory to celebrate, punishable by death if you don’t. It’ll be a holiday that honors freedom.


The books were easy to restack, but he pulled a few titles to donate, anyhow. Books should be an experience, he thought, not a trophy for having read them.

But once an original book has been written-and no more than one or two appear in a century-men of letters imitate it, in other words, they copy it so that hundreds of thousands of books are published on exactly the same theme, with slightly different titles and modified phraseology. This should be able to be achieved by apes, who are essentially imitators, provided, of course, that they are able to make use of language.

I’ve got a flesh-colored tattoo. I drew it myself. You should see it sometime, if only you could see it (it’s invisible).

Rather than the grey and dreary institutions of public perception, these should be places of innovation and experiment, where readers can take a chance on a book, pick one because they like the look of the cover or the title or because they see it returned by the gorgeous young man who lives in their street. After all, they will have absolutely nothing to lose. The book will be free.

Last year in a library in Alaska I read a folk tale in a random book on a random shelf & have been thinking about it since & today I wrote the librarian w/ no book title or author & in 2 hrs I had a scan of the story & cover in my inbox -- Librarians should be running everything. [Twitter]

Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much. To stop writing would kill me. I'd never be able to walk through a bookstore without fingering the spines with longing, wondering at the lengthy editorial process that got these titles on shelves and reminiscing about my own. And I'd spend the rest of life curdling with jealousy every time someone like Emmy Cho gets a book deal, every time I learn that some young up-and-comer is living the life I should be living. Writing has formed the core of my identity since I was a child. After Dad died, after Mom withdrew into herself, and after Rory decided to forge a life without me, writing gave me a reason to stay alive. And as miserable as it makes me, I'll cling to that magic for as long as I live.

The true elitists in the literary world are the ones who have become annoyed by literary ambition in any form, who have converted the very meaning of ambition so totally that it now registers as an act of disdain, a hostility to the poor common reader, who should never be asked to do anything that might lead to a pulled muscle. (What a relief to be told there's no need to bother with a book that might seem thorny, or abstract, or unusual.) The elitists are the ones who become angry when it is suggested to them that a book with low sales might actually deserve a prize (...) and readers were assured that the low sales figures for some of the titles could only mean that the books had failed our culture's single meaningful literary test.

Love isn’t stackable and interlocking, like boxes or Legos. Love is like a one-legged man standing on a three-legged chair that is placed on top of a two-legged piano. I should know, because I’m the guy trying to tune that piano, fix that chair, and affix a prosthetic leg to that guy—who happens to be my piano teacher. Mr. Balloonky, you get down from there now!


The annoying thing about reading is that you can never get the job done. The other day I was in a bookstore flicking through a book called something like 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (and, without naming names, you should be aware that the task set by the title is by definition impossible, because at least four hundred of the books suggested would kill you anyway), but reading begets reading--that's sort of the point of it, surely?--and anybody who never deviates from a set list of books is intellectually dead anyway.

I think a great book title would be “Ida Says ‘I do’ in Idaho.” It would be about a divorce in Washington State, and the protagonist would be a woman, though I’m not sure what her name should be.

Economist should be spelled echonomist, because they all repeat each other.

They should make blindfolds with circles cut out where the eyes are, so kidnappers would be able to tell when their victims‘ eyes are closed, so their secret locations aren’t revealed.

Now that you're a Skinny Bitch, don't turn into a skinny bitch. We conceived of the title, Skinny Bitch, to get attention and sell books.... But we are not bitches, and we have no desire to promote bitchiness. There is nothing uglier than a pretty woman who's nasty. If you look great, you should feel good about yourself and be happy.

Anyone getting starry-eyed about owning a bookstore should ask herself a few questions: Can you lift a box weighing fifty pounds? Do you know what cat pee on paper smells like and can you get it out? Will you exude patience while solving puzzles that start "I'm looking for a book..." and peter out somewhere between "it has 'The' in the title" and "It has a red cover and the author was a soldier whose last name started with S. Or was it Z?

Even though I believe birthday parties should be given, not taken, I wish someone would take all of mine and hide them on the other side of eternity.

Instead of burning the midnight oil, you should try selling it.

Dad is looking at the bookshelves, deep in thought, deciding which book should go where. Once, Mom came home from work and discovered that he had turned all the books around so that the bindings were against the wall and the pages faced out. He said it was calming not to have all those words floating around and "creating static." Mom made him turn them back. She said it was too hard to find a book when she couldn't read the titles. Then she poured herself a big glass of wine.

The light lulls you into a false sense of security. But if the dark should come suddenly and silently, you’d stand out like black on night.

Maybe I should follow someone considering my next book is titled stalked.

My father looked carelessly at the title page of my book, and said, "Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash." If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me, that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded, and that a modern system of science had been introduced, which possessed much greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the former were real and practical; under such circumstances, I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside, and, with my imagination warmed as it was, should probably have applied myself to the more rational theory of chemistry which has resulted from modern discoveries

Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man, and so directly opposite to the generous Temper and Courage of our Nation; that 'tis hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a Gentleman, should plead for't.. And truly, I should have taken Sr. Rt: Filmer's "Patriarcha" as any other Treatise, which would perswade all Men, that they are Slaves, and ought to be so, for such another exercise of Wit, as was his who writ the Encomium (Praise) of Nero, rather than for a serious Discourse meant in earnest, had not the Gravity of the Title and Epistle, the Picture in the Front of the Book, and the Applause that followed it, required me to believe, that the Author and Publisher were both in earnest. I therefore took it into my hands with all the expectation and read it through with all the attention due to a Treaties, that made such a noise at its coming abroad and cannot but confess my self mightily surprised, that in a Book which was to provide Chains for all Mankind, I should find nothing but a Rope of Sand, useful perhaps to such, whose Skill and Business it is to raise a Dust, and would blind the People, the better to mislead them, but in truth is not of any force to draw those into Bondage, who have their Eyes open, and so much Sense about them as to consider, that Chains are but an Ill wearing, how much Care soever hath been taken to file and polish them.

What should I use for a fake speech then?” Pico Not-Connected-To-Its-Source says from the car’s speakers. “I gave you the most accurate Literature Understanding Intelligence,” Yuan says. “That’s for book reviewing and suggesting you titles, not for making up a fake speech,” Pico protests. “I’m not connected to—” “Find something from my last fifty years of speeches. Be useful. Never bother me with Independence-Day speeches again.” Yuan silences the line. This time his voice sounds a bit cold, scratching the line of anger. Just a little. Perhaps, the death of thirty-seven rarest animals on the planet shouldn’t keep you calm after all. Even if they are ‘not pets’.

Peter’s Jesus of Nazareth, the one who lived and died and who was raised and ascended and enthroned, is both Messiah of Israel and Lord of the whole world. Those are the terms of the early gospeling in the book of Acts, and if we want to be faithful to the Bible, those should be our terms as well. Those titles for Jesus tell the gospel Story of Jesus.

Things should go where I intend them to go, not where I tend to put them.

It may be bad for you, but government has no role in dictating our lives. People should be free to imprison themselves.

I bought a zoo, which is funny, because I own the very place that should own me.

A customer at 11.15 a.m. asked for a copy of Far from the Maddening Crowd. In spite of several attempts to explain that the book's title is actually Far from the Madding Crowd, he resolutely refused to accept that this was the case, even when the overwhelming evidence of a copy of it was placed on the counter under this nose: 'Well, the printers have got that wrong.' Despite the infuriating nature of this exchange, I ought to be grateful: he has given me an idea for the title of my autobiography should I ever be fortunate enough to retire.

Do I look like someone you know? Well you don’t know me, so why don’t you go bother my clone? And if you do see my clone, tell him I should have made an omelet out of him when I had the chance.

Perhaps I should admit on the title page that this book is "By L. Frank Baum and his correspondents," for I have used many suggestions conveyed to me in letters from children. Once on a time I really imagined myself "an author of fairy tales," but now I am merely an editor or private secretary for a host of youngsters whose ideas I am requested to weave into the thread of my stories...My, what imaginations these children have developed! Sometimes I am fairly astounded by their daring an genius. There will be no lack of fairy-tale authors in the future, I am sure. My readers have told me what to do with Dorothy, and Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, and I have obeyed their mandates. They have also given me a variety of subjects to write about in the future: enough, in fact, to keep me busy for some time. I am very proud of this alliance. Children love these stories because children have helped to create them. My readers know what they want and realize I try to please them. The result is satisfactory to the publishers, to me, and (I am quite sure) to the children. I hope, my dears, it will be a long time before we are obliged to dissolve partnership.

Answered Prayers Answered is a terrifically stupid title. So, so dumb. You don’t know how to write this book. You don’t even know if you should write this book. Certainly no one else is here for it. It might be wise to accept these as things that meaningfully indicate how unwise this idea is. Do better!

[WAIT—IT WON’T LET ME REDACT THESE LITTLE SUBHEADING THINGS? THAT’S SUPER ANNOYING!] [FINE, I’LL JUST GIVE YOU MY SUMMARY.] [SO, WHOEVER WROTE THIS WAS ALL BLAH-BLAH-BLAH-STELLARLUNE-SOMETHING-SOMETHING-LEGACY. BUT SERIOUSLY, NO ONE WANTS TO READ ABOUT THE CREEPY STUFF MY MOM DID BEFORE SHE GOT PREGNANT WITH ME! (AND WE’RE ALL SUPER SICK OF HEARING ABOUT MY “LEGACY,” AMIRITE?) SO, LET’S JUST LEAVE IT AT THIS: MY MOM IS EVIL. SHE THINKS SHE’S WAY SMARTER THAN SHE IS. AND NOTHING SHE DID IS GOING TO AFFECT MY GENERAL AWESOMENESS, OKAY?] A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY: [WOW, HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH SUCH A CLEVER TITLE?!] [AND YEAH, I HAVE A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY. NOT SURE WHY ANYONE CARES. BUT IT DOES COME IN HANDY DURING MIDTERMS AND FINALS.] AHEAD OF THE GAME: [BASICALLY: I’M A GENIUS. I SKIPPED LEVEL ONE AT FOXFIRE. YES, YOU SHOULD BE IMPRESSED.] UNREASONABLY HIGH STANDARDS: [GOTTA ADMIT, I WAS TEMPTED TO LEAVE THIS ONE ALONE, SINCE WHOEVER WROTE IT ACTUALLY GOT THINGS PRETTY MUCH RIGHT. I GUESS EVEN THE COUNCIL KNOWS MY DAD’S A JERK WHO FREAKS OUT ALL THE TIME BECAUSE I’M NOT A LITTLE MINI-HIM. WHO KNEW?] A POWERFUL EMPATH: [UGH, THAT’S THE BEST YOU COULD DO FOR THIS SUBHEADING???] [HOW ABOUT “LORD OF THE FEELS”? OR “TRUST THE EMPATH”! OR “HE KNOWS WHAT YOU’RE FEELING—AND YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF”?] [OOO! I’VE GOT IT! “HE KNOWS FOSTER BETTER THAN YOU DO! BETTER THAN SHE EVEN KNOWS HERSELF!”] [THOUGH… KEEPING IT REAL? THE FOSTER OBLIVION CAN BE KINDA NOT COOL SOMETIMES.] THE HEART OF THE MATTER: [I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU GUYS NAMED A SECTION OF MY FILE AFTER MY FATHER’S SUPER-BORING BOOK—AND THEN RAMBLED ON FOR TWO PAGES ABOUT HIS SUPER-BORING THEORY!!!!!] [YOU DON’T NEED TWO PAGES ON IT. YOU DON’T EVEN NEED TWO SENTENCES. HERE’S ALLLLLL YOU NEED TO KNOW—BESIDES THE FACT THAT HE’S TOTALLY NOT THE FIRST PERSON TO COME UP WITH THIS (JUST THE ONE WHO LOVES TO TAKE CREDIT): OUR HEADS AND OUR HEARTS SOMETIMES FEEL DIFFERENT EMOTIONS, AND WHAT’S IN OUR HEARTS IS PROBABLY STRONGER.] [THAT’S IT!] [WELL… OKAY… I GUESS HE ALSO GOES ON A BIT ABOUT HOW EMPATHS PROBABLY ONLY READ THE EMOTIONS FROM THE HEAD.] [AND THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT HEART EMOTIONS BEING PURER BECAUSE NO ONE CAN CONTROL THEM.] [BUT THAT’S IT.] [AND DON’T TELL LORD BORINGPANTS I READ HIS DUMB BOOK! I MOSTLY SKIMMED.] PRANKSTER AND TROUBLEMAKER: [100 PERCENT ACCURATE. ALSO, I’M LEAVING YOUR LITTLE ATTACHED DETENTION RECORD BECAUSE IT’S THE GREATEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!!!!]

Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate; I desire, therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which led to my predilection for that science. When I was thirteen years of age, we all went on a party of pleasure to the baths near Thonon: the inclemency of the weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn. In this house I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa. I opened it with apathy; the theory which he attempts to demonstrate, and the wonderful facts which he relates, soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm. A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind; and, bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly at the title page of my book, and said, "Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash." If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded, and that a modern system of science had been introduced, which possessed much greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the former were real and practical; under such circumstances, I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside, and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin. But the cursory glance my father had taken of my volume by no means assured me that he was acquainted with its contents; and I continued to read with the greatest avidity.

At this point I feel I would be remiss to not mention the prevalence of a specific kind of person who enters the field of book publishing. This is the English lit major who never should have left academia, a genius who has read all of V.S. Naipaul but can’t photocopy title pages right side up. This person is very thin, possibly vegan, probably Ivy League. He or she feels as if answering the phone in a chipper voice is a form of legalized prostitution. He or she has a single quirky fashion piece, usually red or black, and waxes poetic about typewriters and the British, having never truly known either. Regardless of sex, they all want to be David Foster Wallace when they grow up.

I love the Unsuggester, a feature of the books site librarything.com: enter a book you’ve recently read, and it’ll provide a list of titles least likely to appear alongside it on other people’s bookshelves. Tell it you’re a fan of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and it’ll suggest you read Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella. And maybe you should.

Arin set the package on the divan where she sat. “A new dress means an event on the horizon.” “Yes, a dinner party. Lord Irex is hosting.” He frowned. “And you’re going?” She shrugged. “Do you need an escort?” Kestrel intended to say no, but became distracted by the determined set to Arin’s mouth. He looked almost…protective. She was surprised that he should look that way. She was confused, and perhaps this made her say, “To be honest, I would be glad for your company.” His eyes held hers. Then his gaze fell to the book by Kestrel’s side. Before she could stop him, he took it with a nimble hand and read the title. It was a Valorian history of its empire and wars. Arin’s face changed. He returned the book and left.

He seems to be giving his people a (mostly) gently worded lecture on their lack of willingness to work even when it appears almost pointless to do so. For that reason, the book should have been titled Hillbilly Reprimand, because Vance doesn't want to mourn his hillbilly family. He wants to make them good proletarians like they allegedly were in the twentieth century.

Now Brutus had deliberately assumed a mask to hide his true character.  When he learned of the murder by Tarquin of the Roman aristocrats, one of the victims being his own brother, he had come to the conclusion that the only way of saving himself was to appear in the king's eyes as a person of no account. If there were nothing in his character for Tarquin to fear, and nothing in his fortune to covet, then the sheer contempt in which he was held would be a better protection than his own rights could ever be.  Accordingly he pretended to be a half-wit and made no protest at the seizure by Tarquin of everything he possessed. He even submitted to being known publicly as the 'Dullard' (which is what his name signifies), that under cover of that opprobrious title the great spirit which gave Rome her freedom might be able to bide its time. On this occasion he was taken by Arruns and Titus to Delphi less as a companion than as a butt for their amusement; and he is said to have carried with him, as his gift to Apollo, a rod of gold inserted into a hollow stick of cornel-wood - symbolic, it may be, of his own character. The three young men reached Delphi, and carried out the king's instructions.  That done, Titus and Arruns found themselves unable to resist putting a further question to the oracle.  Which of them, they asked, would be the next king of Rome? From the depths of the cavern came the mysterious answer: 'He who shall be the first to kiss his mother shall hold in Rome supreme authority.' Titus and Arruns were determined to keep the prophecy absolutely secret, to prevent their other brother, Tarquin, who had been left in Rome, from knowing anything about it. Thus he, at any rate, would be out of the running. For themselves, they drew lots to determine which of them, on their return, should kiss his mother first. Brutus, however, interpreted the words of Apollo's priestess in a different way. Pretending to trip, he fell flat on his face, and his lips touched the Earth - the mother of all living things.

Dear Miss Hummingbird,
 The leaves are turning green now, but not with envy. But they should be envious, because I, Jarod Ora Kintz, son of a thousand question marks, now have what every unemployed American most covets: a cat. Oh, and I’ve also got a new job. Almost forgot to mention it. “What will you be doing?” you may be wondering, and “Is it legal?” Those answers, as you can imagine, are gray. But so are elephants. Gray, I mean. Elephants are gray, not illegal, even though a certain political party in this country that’s represented by an elephant mascot certainly does things that to the normal citizen would be considered illegal. But I digress.
 Turns out that right under “Mayor of Orafouraville” on my resume, I can now add “Concierge at the Five-Star Hotel.” Concierge is just a fancy term that means something similar in Latin, I’m sure.
 My job will be to arrange activities for hotel guests for everything from opera tickets to dinner reservations to even organizing the burial of a loved one—though not if the disposal of the body is to be kept secret because a murder has occurred. Murder is such a ghastly (and ghostly) way to spoil dinner reservations for two, wouldn’t you agree? Or, rather, wouldn’t you not disagree?
 This job will allow me to meet interesting people from all over the planet, and possibly even other planets (like Pluto, if that’s still even a planet).
 It’s a full-time job, at least part of the time (40 hours per week out of a possible 168 hours). I’ll be expected to wear a shirt and tie. And, of course, pants—but that goes without saying. What also goes without saying are guests, but I hope some at least say goodbye before they go. 


According to AC, serious historical inquiry incorrectly considers the question *what if* to be the turf of Philip K. Dick or comic book titles like *What if the Incredible Hulk Had the Brain of Bruce Banner?* Although historians were not in the business of assigning probabilities to historical events, AC opined they should. 'Look, chum," he once expounded, 'it's not like anything can happen at any time. You have to consider *conditions of possibility*.

I am Orafoura, but you can call me Jarod Kintz. I’m fairly proud to proclaim that Dora J. Arod has me on her short list of “World’s worst writers.” The list couldn’t get any shorter, because I’m the only name on it. I should tell her to stop calling it a list, and change the title to “World’s worst writer.” If you’re wondering why I rate all my work one star, it’s because the rating system doesn’t have a zero star option, or better yet, go into negative numbers.

Your Alex.He's selfish too.He could have left you alone, but he didn't. The difference is he's always known the consequences." "And what are the consequences? What did you see?" "You really should learn your history better Rowan." She slid the book across the table to me. The book was open and her finger was pointed to a list of names. I took a deep breath and began to read aloud. "A list of the accused witches hung at Gallows Hill." I let my eyes wander down until they froze on one name. "Alexander William Foster." The words sucked the life from me, leaving me limp and broken. My eyes met hers. "What does this mean?" She pulled the book back and grabbed my hand. "It means that Alex is from a very different place. A place where is no free will.When they find out what he is, he'll hang for it, Rowan.And they will find out.It's all here. His future is our history.You can't change that." She tapped on the book as she folded the cover closed. I caught a glimpse of the title. The Salem Witch Trials.

When I was thirteen years of age...I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa. I opened it with apathy; the theory which he attempts to demonstrate, and the wonderful facts which he relates, soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm. A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind; and, bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly at the title page of my book, and said, "Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash." If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded, and that a modern system of science had been introduced, which possessed much greater powers than the ancient...I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside, and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin.

Though committed to a chemistry major, that spring he petitioned the Physics Department for graduate standing, which would allow him to take upper-level physics courses. To demonstrate that he knew something about physics, he listed fifteen books he claimed to have read. Years later, he heard that when the faculty committee met to consider his petition, one professor, George Washington Pierce, quipped, “Obviously, if he [Oppenheimer] says he’s read these books, he’s a liar, but he should get a Ph.D. for knowing their titles.

Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much. To stop writing would kill me. I'd never be able to walk through a bookstore without fingering the spines with long-ing, wondering at the lengthy editorial process that got these titles on shelves and reminiscing about my own. And I'd spend the rest of life curdling with jealousy every time someone like Emmy Cho gets a book deal, every time I learn that some young up-and-comer is living the life I should be living.

The world spinning. AUTHOR’S NOTE PHILIPPE PETIT WALKED A TIGHTROPE WIRE between the World Trade Center towers on August 7, 1974. I have used his walk in this novel, but all the other events and characters in this work are fictional. I have taken liberties with Petit’s walk, while trying to remain true to the texture of the moment and its surroundings. Readers interested in Petit’s walk should go to his book To Reach the Clouds (Faber and Faber, 2002) for an intimate account. The photograph used on page 237 is by Vic DeLuca, Rex Images, August 7, 1974, copyright Rex USA. To both of these artists I’m deeply indebted. The title of this book comes from the Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem “Locksley Hall.” That in turn was heavily influenced by the “Mu’allaqat,” or the “Suspended Poems,” seven long Arabic poems written in the sixth century. Tennyson’s poem mentions “pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales,” and the “Mu’allaqat” asks, “Is there any hope that this desolation can bring me solace?” Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.

In 2002, after the huge success of Who Moved my Cheese? a management manual that sold 1.6million copies in China, there was a rush of books inspired by it. Titles included Whose Cheese Should I Move?; Can I Move Your Cheese?; Who Dares to Move my Cheese?; I Don’t Bother to Move Your Cheese; Agitating, Alluring Cheese; No One Can Move My Cheese! The New Allegory of Cheese; Make the Cheese by Yourself!; A Piece of Cheese: Reading World Famous Fairy Tales; Management Advice 52 from the Cheese; and No More Cheese! Finally, there was my personal favorite: Chinese People Eat Cheese? - Who Took My Meat Bun?

There was a man in Florence, a friar, Fra Savonarola, he induced all the people to think beauty was a sin. Some people think he was a magician and they fell under his spell for a season, they made fires in the streets and they threw in everything they liked, everything they had made or worked to buy, bolts of silk, and linen their mothers had embroidered for their marriage beds, books of poems written in the poet's hand, bonds and wills, rent-rolls, title deeds, dogs and cats, the shirts from their backs, the rings from their fingers, women their veils, and do you know what was worst, Johane – they threw in their mirrors. So then they couldn't see their faces and know how they were different from the beasts in the field and the creatures screaming on the pyre. And when they had melted their mirrors they went home to their empty houses, and lay on the floor because they had burned their beds, and when they got up next day they were aching from the hard floor and there was no table for their breakfast because they'd used the table to feed the bonfire, and no stool to sit on because they'd chopped it into splinters, and there was no bread to eat because the bakers had thrown into the flames the basins and the yeast and the flour and the scales. And you know the worst of it? They were sober. Last night they took their wine-skins …’ He turns his arm, in a mime of a man lobbing something into a fire. ‘So they were sober and their heads were clear, but they looked around and they had nothing to eat, nothing to drink and nothing to sit on.’ ‘But that wasn't the worst. You said the mirrors were the worst. Not to be able to look at yourself.’ ‘Yes. Well, so I think. I hope I can always look myself in the face. And you, Johane, you should always have a fine glass to see yourself. As you're a woman worth looking at.’ You

In 1994 very, very few people had heard of the internet. It was used at that time mostly by scientists and physicists. We used it a little bit at D. E. Shaw for some things but not much, and I came across the fact that the web—the World Wide Web—was growing at something like 2,300 percent a year. Anything growing that fast, even if it’s baseline usage today is tiny, is going to be big. I concluded that I should come up with a business idea based on the internet and then let the internet grow around it and keep working to improve it. So I made a list of products I might sell online. I started ranking them, and I picked books because books are super unusual in one respect: there are more items in the book category than in any other category. There are three million different books in print around the world at any given time. The biggest bookstores had only 150,000 titles. So the founding idea of Amazon was to build a universal selection of books in print. That’s what I did: I hired a small team, and we built the software. I moved to Seattle because the largest book warehouse in the world at that time was nearby in a town called Roseberg, Oregon, and also because of the recruiting pool available from Microsoft.

...he never so much as looks at me. He just sits there reading his old history books, that really gets me. I ought to go up to him, I really feel this, I should say, Martin, it's so stupid reading all those books. Don't fool yourself, how many of these wretched books do you think you know? Go on, you've got plenty of intelligence, so let's say you read two books a week, for fifty years. In your lifetime, you'll have read how many? Five thousand? That's nothing. Nothing at all, compared to what we have here: two hundred and fifty thousand, seven hundred different books. And in the National Library, they've got fourteen million. We're just cockroaches. So we'd do better to have a bit of fun, look at each other, talk and reproduce, don't you think? If you like, we can go to Versailles, together, any time at all, we can go wherever you want to go, to some beach somewhere, I'll be your Pompadour and we'll love each other until the end of love, hand in hand, we'll gaze at the sea, the sea that begins and ceases and then again begins, the pounding of the surf, the flow of water, the flow of light coming in new every day, fresh surges from the deep, the tide will carry us off, and the flow of paper, every year fifty thousand new titles, fifty thousand books fighting for the chance to come swell our groaning bookshelves, and every year they make me more aware of my limited span, my old age and my insignificance.

Imagine you are a reader perusing reviews of a brand new title to decide if that book is right for you. All the reviews are positive, glowing reports, and you purchase the book feeling confident it’s a winner based on the high ratings it’s sporting. Then after reading it, your excitement and warm fuzzy feelings over the title (and those reviews) have vanished. We must not have read the same book, you begin to wonder. So you go back and look at the reviews again. Now there are several low reviews posted— ARCs that were previously held back. And low and behold, the less than stellar reviews point to the same issues you had. Don’t you feel duped? You should because under this scenario the review system didn't give you an ample sampling of varied opinions.

It might be useful here to say a word about Beckett, as a link between the two stages, and as illustrating the shift towards schism. He wrote for transition, an apocalyptic magazine (renovation out of decadence, a Joachite indication in the title), and has often shown a flair for apocalyptic variations, the funniest of which is the frustrated millennialism of the Lynch family in Watt, and the most telling, perhaps, the conclusion of Comment c'est. He is the perverse theologian of a world which has suffered a Fall, experienced an Incarnation which changes all relations of past, present, and future, but which will not be redeemed. Time is an endless transition from one condition of misery to another, 'a passion without form or stations,' to be ended by no parousia. It is a world crying out for forms and stations, and for apocalypse; all it gets is vain temporality, mad, multiform antithetical influx. It would be wrong to think that the negatives of Beckett are a denial of the paradigm in favour of reality in all its poverty. In Proust, whom Beckett so admires, the order, the forms of the passion, all derive from the last book; they are positive. In Beckett, the signs of order and form are more or less continuously presented, but always with a sign of cancellation; they are resources not to be believed in, cheques which will bounce. Order, the Christian paradigm, he suggests, is no longer usable except as an irony; that is why the Rooneys collapse in laughter when they read on the Wayside Pulpit that the Lord will uphold all that fall. But of course it is this order, however ironized, this continuously transmitted idea of order, that makes Beckett's point, and provides his books with the structural and linguistic features which enable us to make sense of them. In his progress he has presumed upon our familiarity with his habits of language and structure to make the relation between the occulted forms and the narrative surface more and more tenuous; in Comment c'est he mimes a virtually schismatic breakdown of this relation, and of his language. This is perfectly possible to reach a point along this line where nothing whatever is communicated, but of course Beckett has not reached it by a long way; and whatever preserves intelligibility is what prevents schism. This is, I think, a point to be remembered whenever one considers extremely novel, avant-garde writing. Schism is meaningless without reference to some prior condition; the absolutely New is simply unintelligible, even as novelty. It may, of course, be asked: unintelligible to whom? --the inference being that a minority public, perhaps very small--members of a circle in a square world--do understand the terms in which the new thing speaks. And certainly the minority public is a recognized feature of modern literature, and certainly conditions are such that there may be many small minorities instead of one large one; and certainly this is in itself schismatic. The history of European literature, from the time the imagination's Latin first made an accommodation with the lingua franca, is in part the history of the education of a public--cultivated but not necessarily learned, as Auerbach says, made up of what he calls la cour et la ville. That this public should break up into specialized schools, and their language grow scholastic, would only be surprising if one thought that the existence of excellent mechanical means of communication implied excellent communications, and we know it does not, McLuhan's 'the medium is the message' notwithstanding. But it is still true that novelty of itself implies the existence of what is not novel, a past. The smaller the circle, and the more ambitious its schemes of renovation, the less useful, on the whole, its past will be. And the shorter. I will return to these points in a moment.

I will not mention the name (and what bits of it I happen to give here appear in decorous disguise) of that man, that Franco-Hungarian writer... I would rather not dwell upon him at all, but I cannot help it— he is surging up from under my pen. Today one does not hear much about him; and this is good, for it proves that I was right in resisting his evil spell, right in experiencing a creepy chill down my spine whenever this or that new book of his touched my hand. The fame of his likes circulates briskly but soon grows heavy and stale; and as for history it will limit his life story to the dash between two dates. Lean and arrogant, with some poisonous pun ever ready to fork out and quiver at you, and with a strange look of expectancy in his dull brown veiled eyes, this false wag had, I daresay, an irresistible effect on small rodents. Having mastered the art of verbal invention to perfection, he particularly prided himself on being a weaver of words, a title he valued higher than that of a writer; personally, I never could understand what was the good of thinking up books, of penning things that had not really happened in some way or other; and I remember once saying to him as I braved the mockery of his encouraging nods that, were I a writer, I should allow only my heart to have imagination, and for the rest rely upon memory, that long-drawn sunset shadow of one’s personal truth. I had known his books before I knew him; a faint disgust was already replacing the aesthetic pleasure which I had suffered his first novel to give me. At the beginning of his career, it had been possible perhaps to distinguish some human landscape, some old garden, some dream- familiar disposition of trees through the stained glass of his prodigious prose... but with every new book the tints grew still more dense, the gules and purpure still more ominous; and today one can no longer see anything at all through that blazoned, ghastly rich glass, and it seems that were one to break it, nothing but a perfectly black void would face one’s shivering soul. But how dangerous he was in his prime, what venom he squirted, with what whips he lashed when provoked! The tornado of his passing satire left a barren waste where felled oaks lay in a row, and the dust still twisted, and the unfortunate author of some adverse review, howling with pain, spun like a top in the dust.

He passed the open library door, then stopped, returned. He pushed the door wider to see Kestrel more fully. A fire burned in the grate. The room was warm, and Kestrel was browsing the shelves as if this were her home, which Arin wanted it to be. Her back to him, she slid a book from its row, a finger on top of its spine. She seemed to sense his presence. She slid the book back and turned. The graze on her cheek had scabbed over. Her blackened eye had sealed shut. The other eye studied him, almond-shaped, amber, perfect. The sight of her rattled Arin even more than he had expected. “Don’t tell people why you killed Cheat,” she said. “It won’t win you any favors.” “I don’t care what they think of me. They need to know what happened.” “It’s not your story to tell.” A charred log shifted on the fire. Its crackle and sift was loud. “You’re right,” Arin said slowly, “but I can’t lie about this.” “Then say nothing.” “I’ll be questioned. I’ll be held accountable by our new leader, though I’m not sure who will take Cheat’s place--” “You. Obviously.” He shook his head. Kestrel lifted one shoulder in a shrug. She turned back to the books. “Kestrel, I didn’t come in here to talk politics.” Her hand trembled slightly, then swept along the titles to hide it. Arin didn’t know how much last night had changed things between them, or in what way. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Cheat should never have been a threat to you. You shouldn’t even be in this house. You’re in this position because I put you there. Here. Forgive me, please.” Her fingers paused: thin, strong, and still. Arin dared to reach for her hand, and Kestrel did not pull away.

GET BEYOND THE ONE-MAN SHOW Great organizations are never one-man operations. There are 22 million licensed small businesses in America that have no employees. Forbes suggests 75 percent of all businesses operate with one person. And the average income of those companies is a sad $44,000. That’s not a business—that’s torture. That is a prison where you are both the warden and the prisoner. What makes a person start a business and then be the only person who works there? Are they committed to staying small? Or maybe an entrepreneur decides that because the talent pool is so poor, they can’t hire anyone who can do it as well as them, and they give up. My guess is the latter: Most people have just given up and said, “It’s easier if I just do it myself.” I know, because that’s what I did—and it was suicidal. Because my business was totally dependent on me and only me, I was barely able to survive, much less grow, for the first ten years. Instead I contracted another company to promote my seminars. When I hired just one person to assist me out of my home office, I thought I was so smart: Keep it small. Keep expenses low. Run a tight ship. Bigger isn’t always better. These were the things I told myself to justify not growing my business. I did this for years and even bragged about how well I was doing on my own. Then I started a second company with a partner, a consulting business that ran parallel to my seminar business. This consulting business quickly grew bigger than my first business because my partner hired people to work for us. But even then I resisted bringing other people into the company because I had this idea that I didn’t want the headaches and costs that come with managing people. My margins were monster when I had no employees, but I could never grow my revenue line without killing myself, and I have since learned that is where all my attention and effort should have gone. But with the efforts of one person and one contracted marketing company, I could expand only so much. I know that a lot of speakers and business gurus run their companies as one-man shows. Which means that while they are giving advice to others about how to grow a business, they may have never grown one themselves! Their one-man show is simply a guy or gal going out, collecting a fee, selling time and a few books. And when they are out speaking, the business terminates all activity. I started studying other people and companies that had made it big and discovered they all had lots of employees. The reality is you cannot have a great business if it’s just you. You need to add other people. If you don’t believe me, try to name one truly great business that is successful, ongoing, viable, and growing that doesn’t have many people making it happen. Good luck. Businesses are made of people, not just machines, automations, and technology. You need people around you to implement programs, to add passion to the technology, to serve customers, and ultimately to get you where you want to go. Consider the behemoth online company Amazon: It has more than 220,000 employees. Apple has more than 100,000; Microsoft has around the same number. Ernst & Young has more than 200,000 people. Apple calls the employees working in its stores “Geniuses.” Don’t you want to hire employees deserving of that title too? Think of how powerful they could make your business.

A VALEDICTION: OF THE BOOK I'll tell thee now (dear love) what thou shalt do To anger destiny, as she doth us; How I shall stay, though she eloign me thus, And how posterity shall know it too; How thine may out-endure Sibyl's glory, and obscure Her who from Pindar could allure, And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame, And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and name. Study our manuscripts, those myriads Of letters, which have past 'twixt thee and me; Thence write our annals, and in them will be To all whom love's subliming fire invades, Rule and example found; There the faith of any ground No schismatic will dare to wound, That sees, how Love this grace to us affords, To make, to keep, to use, to be these his records. This book, as long-lived as the elements, Or as the world's form, this all-graved tome In cypher writ, or new made idiom; We for Love's clergy only are instruments; When this book is made thus, Should again the ravenous Vandals and Goths invade us, Learning were safe; in this our universe, Schools might learn sciences, spheres music, angels verse. Here Love's divines—since all divinity Is love or wonder—may find all they seek, Whether abstract spiritual love they like, Their souls exhaled with what they do not see; Or, loth so to amuse Faith's infirmity, they choose Something which they may see and use; For, though mind be the heaven, where love doth sit, Beauty a convenient type may be to figure it. Here more than in their books may lawyers find, Both by what titles mistresses are ours, And how prerogative these states devours, Transferred from Love himself, to womankind; Who, though from heart and eyes, They exact great subsidies, Forsake him who on them relies; And for the cause, honour, or conscience give; Chimeras vain as they or their prerogative. Here statesmen, (or of them, they which can read) May of their occupation find the grounds; Love, and their art, alike it deadly wounds, If to consider what 'tis, one proceed. In both they do excel Who the present govern well, Whose weakness none doth, or dares tell; In this thy book, such will there something see, As in the Bible some can find out alchemy. Thus vent thy thoughts; abroad I'll study thee, As he removes far off, that great heights takes; How great love is, presence best trial makes, But absence tries how long this love will be; To take a latitude Sun, or stars, are fitliest viewed At their brightest, but to conclude Of longitudes, what other way have we, But to mark when and where the dark eclipses be?

After dinners in Ris-Orangis, Derrida would gladly offer to drive home any guests without transport. He enjoyed driving, and always went into Paris by car. He’d learned when still very young, on the job, with his father’s car. But since he had never studied the highway code, he had his own ideas about it, which could sometimes lead to spectacular results. He considered, for example, that most ‘no entry’ signs did not actually apply to him, and that big roads should automatically have priority over smaller ones. At the wheel, he rapidly lost his cool. In traffic jams, he could almost get hysterical. And, to crown it all, whenever he stopped for even a short time he would start taking notes. In a letter to Éric Clémens, he indicated in a PS: ‘Excuse the handwriting, I’m writing in the car (what a life!), but I’ve stopped, not even at a red light. I’ve just thought of the title for a book: Written at a Red Light . . .’33 But while he was not a reassuring figure at the wheel, he never had an accident.

It is a repeated error among intellectual historians to assume that ideas have a self-contained history of their own, and that one idea gives rise to another in something like the way one weather system gives rise to the next. Marxists, who regard ideas as by-products of economic forces, commit the opposite error, dismissing the intellectual life as entirely subservient to material causes. The vast and destructive influence of Marxist theory is a clear disproof of what it says. As the American conservative Richard Weaver put it, in the title of a famous and influential book, Ideas Have Consequences (1948), and this is as true of conservative ideas as it is of ideas propagated on the left. To understand the pre-history of conservatism, therefore, one should accept that ideas have far-reaching influence over human affairs; but one should recognise also that they do not arise only from other ideas, and often have roots in biological, social and political conditions that lie deeper than rational argument.

Nonconformity is an affront to those in the mainstream. Our impulse is to dismiss this lifestyle, create reasons why it can’t work, why it doesn’t even warrant consideration. Why not? Living outdoors is cheap and can be afforded by a half year of marginal employment. They can’t buy things that most of us have, but what they lose in possessions, they gain in freedom. In Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, lead character Larry returns from the First World War and declares that he would like to “loaf.”23 The term “loafing” inadequately describes the life he would spend traveling, studying, searching for meaning, and even laboring. Larry meets with the disapproval of peers and would-be mentors: “Common sense assured…that if you wanted to get on in this world, you must accept its conventions, and not to do what everybody else did clearly pointed to instability.” Larry had an inheritance that enabled him to live modestly and pursue his dreams. Larry’s acquaintances didn’t fear the consequences of his failure; they feared his failure to conform. I’m no maverick. Upon leaving college I dove into the workforce, eager to have my own stuff and a job to pay for it. Parents approved, bosses gave raises, and my friends could relate. The approval, the comforts, the commitments wound themselves around me like invisible threads. When my life stayed the course, I wouldn’t even feel them binding. Then I would waiver enough to sense the growing entrapment, the taming of my life in which I had been complicit. Working a nine-to-five job took more energy than I had expected, leaving less time to pursue diverse interests. I grew to detest the statement “I am a…” with the sentence completed by an occupational title. Self-help books emphasize “defining priorities” and “staying focused,” euphemisms for specialization and stifling spontaneity. Our vision becomes so narrow that risk is trying a new brand of cereal, and adventure is watching a new sitcom. Over time I have elevated my opinion of nonconformity nearly to the level of an obligation. We should have a bias toward doing activities that we don’t normally do to keep loose the moorings of society. Hiking the AT is “pointless.” What life is not “pointless”? Is it not pointless to work paycheck to paycheck just to conform? Hiking the AT before joining the workforce was an opportunity not taken. Doing it in retirement would be sensible; doing it at this time in my life is abnormal, and therein lay the appeal. I want to make my life less ordinary.

She looked up to see a knob of canary-yellow butter being carried towards her in a glass-lidded container. 'All this butter just for me, when there's a national shortage...' Hearing Rika mumbling these words, the maitre d' smiled and lifted the lid of the dish. 'This butter had been flown in especially from overseas. Pleas help yourself to as much as you'd like.' Confronted with an overwhelming selection of different kinds of bread on the trolley, Rika chose the simplest option she could see--- a piece of baguette. Once again, she thought that she should have come with Reiko. Reiko would have told her which to choose. Rika spread a thick layer of butter on the bread. The butter, of a firmness that would break apart slowly on the tongue, went sinking into the crumb of the baguette. That alone was enough to make Rika glad she'd come. The next course to be served was a chilled dish of avocado and snow crab stacked delicately like layer cake, topped with a generous helping of caviar. The acidity of the pomegranate seeds that exploded juicily in her mouth accentuated the creamy richness of the avocado and the sweetness of the crab flesh. Their unabashed scarlet hue brought the color palette of the whole plate to life. Chased by the champagne, the taste of the crab and the caviar expanded like light suffusing her mouth.

When the dress for Irex’s dinner party arrived wrapped in muslin and tied with twine, it was Arin who brought the package to Kestrel. She hadn’t seen him since the first green storm. She didn’t like to think about that day. It was her grief, she decided, that she didn’t want to remember. She was learning to live around it. She had returned to her music, and let that outings and lessons flow around the fact of Enai’s death, smoothing its jagged edges. She spent little time at the villa. She sent no invitations to Arin for Bite and Sting. If she went into society, she chose other escorts. When Arin stepped into her sitting room that was really a writing room, Kestrel set her book next to her on the divan and turned its spine so that he wouldn’t see the title. “Hmm,” Arin said, turning the packaged dress over in his hands. “What could this be?” “I am sure you know.” He pressed it between his fingers. “A very soft kind of weapon, I think.” “Why are you delivering my dress?” “I saw Lirah with it. I asked if I could bring it to you.” “And she let you, of course.” He lifted his brows at her tone. “She was busy. I thought she would be glad for one less thing to do.” “That was kind of you then,” Kestrel said, though she heard her voice indicate otherwise and was annoyed with herself. Slowly, he said, “What do you mean?” “I mean nothing.” “You asked me to be honest with you. Do you think I have been?” She remembered his harsh words during the storm. “Yes.” “Can I not ask the same thing of you?” The answer was no, no slave could ask anything of her. The answer was no, if he wanted her secret thoughts he could try to win them at Bite and Sting. But Kestrel swallowed a sudden flare of nervousness and admitted to herself that she valued his honesty--and her own, when she was around him. There was nothing wrong with speaking the truth. “I think that you are not fair to Lirah.” His brows drew together. “I don’t understand.” “It’s not fair for you to encourage Lirah when your heart is elsewhere.” He inhaled sharply. Kestrel thought that he might tell her it was no business of hers, for it was not, but then she saw that he wasn’t offended, only taken aback. He pulled up a chair in that possessive, natural way of his and sank into it, dropping the dress onto his knees. He studied her. She willed herself not to look away. “I hadn’t thought of Lirah like that.” Arin shook his head. “I’m not thinking clearly at all. I need to be more careful.” Kestrel supposed that she should feel reassured. Arin set the package on the divan where she sat. “A new dress means an event on the horizon.” “Yes, a dinner party. Lord Irex is hosting.” He frowned. “And you’re going?” She shrugged. “Do you need an escort?” Kestrel intended to say no, but became distracted by the determined set to Arin’s mouth. He looked almost…protective. She was surprised that he should look that way. She was confused, and perhaps this made her say, “To be honest, I would be glad for your company.” His eyes held hers. Then his gaze fell to the book by Kestrel’s side. Before she could stop him, he took it with a nimble hand and read the title. It was a Valorian history of its empire and wars. Arin’s face changed. He returned the book and left.

Support for Miller’s concerns came from an unlikely source in the person of Matt Taibbi, a veteran journalist who had written two best-selling anti-Trump books. In an article published five days after Miller’s interview and titled “We’re in a Permanent Coup,” he warned of the threat to America’s democratic order posed by the deep-state conspiracy: “The Trump presidency is the first to reveal a full-blown schism between the intelligence community and the White House. Senior figures in the CIA, NSA, FBI and other agencies made an open break from their would-be boss before Trump’s inauguration, commencing a public war of leaks that has not stopped. “My discomfort in the last few years, first with Russiagate and now with Ukrainegate and impeachment, stems from the belief that the people pushing hardest for Trump’s early removal are more dangerous than Trump. Many Americans don’t see this because they’re not used to waking up in a country where you’re not sure who the president will be by nightfall. They don’t understand that this predicament is worse than having a bad president.”213 This warning from Taibbi was echoed by another liberal critic of Trump—Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. In a talk show appearance on New York’s AM 970 radio on Sunday, November 10, 2019, Dershowitz said, “Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, whether you’re from New York or the middle of the country, you should be frightened by efforts to try to create crimes out of nothing. . . . It reminds me of what Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the KGB, said to Stalin. He said, ‘Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime,’ by which he really meant, ‘I’ll make up the crime.’ And so the Democrats are now making up crimes.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK WHAT TO DO FIRST 1. Find the MAP. It will be there. No Tour of Fantasyland is complete without one. It will be found in the front part of your brochure, quite near the page that says For Mom and Dad for having me and for Jeannie (or Jack or Debra or Donnie or …) for putting up with me so supportively and for my nine children for not interrupting me and for my Publisher for not discouraging me and for my Writers’ Circle for listening to me and for Barbie and Greta and Albert Einstein and Aunty May and so on. Ignore this, even if you are wondering if Albert Einstein is Albert Einstein or in fact the dog. This will be followed by a short piece of prose that says When the night of the wolf waxes strong in the morning, the wise man is wary of a false dawn. Ka’a Orto’o, Gnomic Utterances Ignore this too (or, if really puzzled, look up GNOMIC UTTERANCES in the Toughpick section). Find the Map. 2. Examine the Map. It will show most of a continent (and sometimes part of another) with a large number of BAYS, OFFSHORE ISLANDS, an INLAND SEA or so and a sprinkle of TOWNS. There will be scribbly snakes that are probably RIVERS, and names made of CAPITAL LETTERS in curved lines that are not quite upside down. By bending your neck sideways you will be able to see that they say things like “Ca’ea Purt’wydyn” and “Om Ce’falos.” These may be names of COUNTRIES, but since most of the Map is bare it is hard to tell. These empty inland parts will be sporadically peppered with little molehills, invitingly labeled “Megamort Hills,” “Death Mountains, ”Hurt Range” and such, with a whole line of molehills near the top called “Great Northern Barrier.” Above this will be various warnings of danger. The rest of the Map’s space will be sparingly devoted to little tiny feathers called “Wretched Wood” and “Forest of Doom,” except for one space that appears to be growing minute hairs. This will be tersely labeled “Marshes.” This is mostly it. No, wait. If you are lucky, the Map will carry an arrow or compass-heading somewhere in the bit labeled “Outer Ocean” and this will show you which way up to hold it. But you will look in vain for INNS, reststops, or VILLAGES, or even ROADS. No – wait another minute – on closer examination, you will find the empty interior crossed by a few bird tracks. If you peer at these you will see they are (somewhere) labeled “Old Trade Road – Disused” and “Imperial Way – Mostly Long Gone.” Some of these routes appear to lead (or have lead) to small edifices enticingly titled “Ruin,” “Tower of Sorcery,” or “Dark Citadel,” but there is no scale of miles and no way of telling how long you might take on the way to see these places. In short, the Map is useless, but you are advised to keep consulting it, because it is the only one you will get. And, be warned. If you take this Tour, you are going to have to visit every single place on this Map, whether it is marked or not. This is a Rule. 3. Find your STARTING POINT. Let us say it is the town of Gna’ash. You will find it down in one corner on the coast, as far away from anywhere as possible. 4. Having found Gna’ash, you must at once set about finding an INN, Tour COMPANIONS, a meal of STEW, a CHAMBER for the night, and then the necessary TAVERN BRAWL. (If you look all these things up in the Toughpick section, you will know what you are in for.) The following morning, you must locate the MARKET and attempt to acquire CLOTHING (which absolutely must include a CLOAK), a SADDLE ROLL, WAYBREAD, WATERBOTTLES, a DAGGER, a SWORD, a HORSE, and a MERCHANT to take you along in his CARAVAN. You must resign yourself to being cheated over most prices and you are advised to consult a local MAGICIAN about your Sword. 5. You set off. Now you are on your own. You should turn to the Toughpick section of this brochure and select your Tour on a pick-and-mix basis, remembering only that you will have to take in all of it.

Matt takes some time to settle himself before he speaks. When he does, he shares an anecdote about how Julie had written a book for him to have after she was gone, and she titled it, The Shortest Longest Romance: An Epic Love and Loss Story. He loses it here, then slowly composes himself and keeps going. He explains that in the book, he was surprised to find that near the end of the story—their story—Julie had included a chapter on how she hoped Matt would always have love in his life. She encouraged him to be honest and kind to what she called his “grief girlfriends”—the rebound girlfriends, the women he’ll date as he heals. Don’t mislead them, she wrote. Maybe you can get something from each other. She followed this with a charming and hilarious dating profile that Matt could use to find his grief girlfriends, and then she got more serious. She wrote the most achingly beautiful love letter in the form of another dating profile that Matt could use to find the person he’d end up with for good. She talked about his quirks, his devotion, their steamy sex life, the incredible family she inherited (and that, presumably, this new woman would inherit), and what an amazing father he’d be. She knew this, she wrote, because they got to be parents together—though in utero and for only a matter of months. The people in the crowd are simultaneously crying and laughing by the time Matt finishes reading. Everyone should have at least one epic love story in their lives, Julie concluded. Ours was that for me. If we’re lucky, we might get two. I wish you another epic love story. We all think it ends there, but then Matt says that he feels it’s only fair that Julie have love wherever she is too. So in that spirit, he says, he’s written her a dating profile for heaven. There are a few chuckles, although they’re hesitant at first. Is this too morbid? But no, it’s exactly what Julie would have wanted, I think. It’s out-there and uncomfortable and funny and sad, and soon everyone is laugh-sobbing with abandon. She hates mushrooms, Matt has written to her heavenly beau, don’t serve her anything with mushrooms. And If there’s a Trader Joe’s, and she says that she wants to work there, be supportive. You’ll also get great discounts. He goes on to talk about how Julie rebelled against death in many ways, but primarily by what Matt liked to call “doing kindnesses” for others, leaving the world a better place than she found it. He doesn’t enumerate them, but I know what they are—and the recipients of her kindnesses all speak about them anyway.

Where the bloody hell is my wife?” Godric yelled into the aether. As if in response, a footman came up the stairs and handed Cedric a slip of paper. Dumbfounded, Cedric opened it and read it aloud. My Dear Gentlemen, We await you in the dining room. Please do not join us until you have decided upon a course of action regarding the threat to Lord Sheridan. We will be more than delighted to offer our opinions on the matter, but in truth, we suspect you do not wish to hear our thoughts. It is a failing of the male species, and we shan’t hold it against you. In the future, however, it would be advisable not to lock us in a room. We simply cannot resist a challenge, something you should have learned by now. Intelligent women are not to be trifled with. Fondest Regards, ~ The Society of Rebellious Ladies ~ “Fondest regards?” Lucien scoffed. A puzzled Jonathan added, “Society of Rebellious Ladies?” “Lord help us!” Ashton groaned as he ran a hand through his hair. “They’ve named themselves.” “I’ll wager a hundred pounds that Emily’s behind this. Having a laugh at our expense,” Charles said in all seriousness. “Let’s go and see how rebellious they are when we’re done with them.” Cedric rolled up the sleeves of his white lawn shirt as he and the others stalked down the stairs to the dining room. They found it empty. The footman reappeared and Cedric wondered if perhaps the man had never left. At the servant’s polite cough he handed Cedric a second note. “Another damn note? What are they playing at?” He practically tore the paper in half while opening it. Again he read it aloud. Did you honestly believe we’d display our cunning in so simple a fashion? Surely you underestimated us. It is quite unfair of you to assume we could not baffle you for at least a few minutes. Perhaps you should look for us in the place where we ought to have been and not the place you put us. Best Wishes, ~ The Society of Rebellious Ladies ~ “I am going to kill her,” Cedric said. It didn’t seem to matter which of the three rebellious ladies he meant. The League of Rogues headed back to the drawing room. Cedric flung the door open. Emily was sitting before the fire, an embroidery frame raised as she pricked the cloth with a fine pointed needle. Audrey was perusing one of her many fashion magazines, eyes fixed on the illustrated plates, oblivious to any disruption. Horatia had positioned herself on the window seat near a candle, so she could read her novel. Even at this distance Lucien could see the title, Lady Eustace and the Merry Marquess, the novel he’d purchased for her last Christmas. For some reason, the idea she would mock him with his own gift was damned funny. He had the sudden urge to laugh, especially when he saw a soft blush work its way up through her. He’d picked that particular book just to shock her, knowing it was quite explicit in parts since he’d read it himself the previous year. “Ahem,” Cedric cleared his throat. Three sets of feminine eyes fixed on him, each reflecting only mild curiosity. Emily smiled. "Oh there you are.

Dear KDP Author, Just ahead of World War II, there was a radical invention that shook the foundations of book publishing. It was the paperback book. This was a time when movie tickets cost 10 or 20 cents, and books cost $2.50. The new paperback cost 25 cents – it was ten times cheaper. Readers loved the paperback and millions of copies were sold in just the first year. With it being so inexpensive and with so many more people able to afford to buy and read books, you would think the literary establishment of the day would have celebrated the invention of the paperback, yes? Nope. Instead, they dug in and circled the wagons. They believed low cost paperbacks would destroy literary culture and harm the industry (not to mention their own bank accounts). Many bookstores refused to stock them, and the early paperback publishers had to use unconventional methods of distribution – places like newsstands and drugstores. The famous author George Orwell came out publicly and said about the new paperback format, if “publishers had any sense, they would combine against them and suppress them.” Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion. Well… history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Fast forward to today, and it’s the e-book’s turn to be opposed by the literary establishment. Amazon and Hachette – a big US publisher and part of a $10 billion media conglomerate – are in the middle of a business dispute about e-books. We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there’s no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out of stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market – e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can and should be less expensive. Perhaps channeling Orwell’s decades old suggestion, Hachette has already been caught illegally colluding with its competitors to raise e-book prices. So far those parties have paid $166 million in penalties and restitution. Colluding with its competitors to raise prices wasn’t only illegal, it was also highly disrespectful to Hachette’s readers. The fact is many established incumbents in the industry have taken the position that lower e-book prices will “devalue books” and hurt “Arts and Letters.” They’re wrong. Just as paperbacks did not destroy book culture despite being ten times cheaper, neither will e-books. On the contrary, paperbacks ended up rejuvenating the book industry and making it stronger. The same will happen with e-books. Many inside the echo-chamber of the industry often draw the box too small. They think books only compete against books. But in reality, books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more. If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive. Moreover, e-books are highly price elastic. This means that when the price goes down, customers buy much more. We've quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000. The important thing to note here is that the lower price is good for all parties involved: the customer is paying 33% less and the author is getting a royalty check 16% larger and being read by an audience that’s 74% larger. The pie is simply bigger.

Criminals should be hung like championship banners—proudly, and in an effort to sell tickets.

Love is like a cookie. Maybe I should have ordered crackers with my condom soup.

Captain Hank Bracker’s book, Salty and Saucy Maine, should have been titled Salty and Saucy Hank Bracker. Yup, Hank’s stories are definitely saucy and salty. The book is full of stories about Hank’s time at Maine Maritime Academy. There are plenty of tales that will make you laugh, a lot of interesting history, and then there are those stories I’d label ribald. Hank worked for many years, after graduating from Maine Maritime, in the maritime industry, including the navy. And he’s written four other books, with lots more stories. “More than anything,” writes Hank, “it was my time at the Academy that built the foundation for what evolved into an adventurous, exciting career and life.” He describes this book as “a young man’s coming-of-age book,” and it is surely that. “Not surprising, by nature I am a free spirit, who loves the company of most animals and some people. You might say that I love to laugh, hold center stage, and tell my yarns the way I remember them. For years, friends have encouraged me to write these tales as short stories. This is part of that effort! All I can add is that Hank’s wife of almost 60 years, Ursula, must be a saint!

These are quite obviously the books that nobody reads,’ said Rocky, studying their titles. ‘But it’s a comfort to know that they are here if you ever should want to read them. I’m sure I should find them more entertaining than the more up-to-date ones. Wild Beasts and their Ways; Five Years with the Congo Cannibals; With Camera and Pen in Northern Nigeria; Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia. I wish people still wrote books with titles like that. Nowadays I believe it simply isn’t done to show a photograph of “The Author with his Pygmy Friends”—we have become too depressingly scientific.

Perhaps you’d like to tell us about your latest quests for wisdom and knowledge instead? O: I’d like to tell you many things, Snorri. But to answer your question: I’ve started a spoken-word poetry group with some of my einherjar. Performances every Thor’s Day night in the Feast Hall of the Slain, with light Saehrimnir refreshments to follow. The Norns are scheduled to make a guest appearance soon, which should prove interesting. Also, I’m taking Zumba classes to understand why in My Name they’re so popular. Finally, I’m researching the magical symbol known in Midgard as [taps first two fingers of right hand against the first two fingers of left hand] hashtag. From what I’ve gleaned, when combined with other words, hashtag has the power to distract the mind from more important matters. If I’m right, I’ll make hashtag the subject of my next book. The working title is…wait for it…Hashtag. SS: An inspired choice, Lord Odin. O: Yes, I know. Sadly, our interview came to an abrupt conclusion at this point.

A publisher of books, which sell for a nickel, made a discovery that should be worth much to publishers generally. He learned that many people buy titles, and not contents of books.

Why aren’t you betrothed to anyone?” he asked with startling directness. “You’ve been out in society for two, three years?” “Three,” Poppy said, feeling more than a little defensive. “Your family is one of means—one would assume you have a generous dowry on the table. Your brother is a viscount—another advantage. Why haven’t you married?” “Do you always ask such personal questions of people you’ve just met?” Poppy asked in amazement. “Not always. But I find you . . . interesting.” She considered the question he had put to her, and shrugged. “I wouldn’t want any of the gentlemen I’ve met during the past three years. None of them are remotely appealing.” “What kind of man appeals to you?” “Someone with whom I could share a quiet, ordinary life.” “Most young women dream of excitement and romance.” She smiled wryly. “I suppose I have a great appreciation for the mundane.” “Has it occurred to you that London is the wrong place to seek a quiet, ordinary life?” “Of course. But I’m not in a position to look in the right places.” She should have stopped there. There was no need to explain more. But it was one of Poppy’s failings that she loved conversation, and like Dodger facing a drawer full of garters, she couldn’t resist indulging. “The problem began when my brother, Lord Ramsay, inherited the title.” The stranger’s brows lifted. “That was a problem?” “Oh, yes,” Poppy said earnestly. “You see, none of the Hathaways were prepared for it. We were distant cousins of the previous Lord Ramsay. The title only came to Leo because of a series of untimely deaths. The Hathaways had no knowledge of etiquette—we knew nothing of the ways of the upper classes. We were happy in Primrose Place.” She paused to sort through the comforting memories of her childhood: the cheerful cottage with its thatched roof, the flower garden where her father had tended his prized Apothecary’s Roses, the pair of lop-eared Belgian rabbits who had lived in a hutch near the back doorstep, the piles of books in every corner. Now the abandoned cottage was in ruins and the garden lay fallow. “But there’s never any going back, is there,” she said rather than asked.

beachfront boardwalk stretches for miles – a great place for exercise and sun. Some of the beaches are stoney, so be careful. Also, for the more straight laced among us, be aware that topless areas and clothing optional beaches are often unmarked. Barcelona has a wonderful buzz that is infectious. This means that the lone traveller should never really feel alone. Downside: Barcelona is the pickpocket capital of Europe. Carry nothing of value in your pockets or handbag. A body pouch is a certain necessity in this city. To read: Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruis Zafon. Set at the end of World War II but a little Gothic in nature, this novel tells of a boy taken by his father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and given the opportunity to choose one title. As he moves into adulthood, he finds someone else, someone with dark designs, also seeks this book.

Jackson uses the silence to give me a bunch of stapled sheets. The title page says: Torture Survivors' Handbook. Information on Support and Resources for Torture Survivors in the UK. "This thing is mostly aimed at people coming here from abroad. But you should read it. And use it." I hold the book in my hands. I say, "They got the apostrophe in the right place. That's good.

Until fairly recently, there has been precious little research on expectant fathers’ emotional and psychological experiences during pregnancy. The very title of one of the first articles to appear on the subject should give you some idea of the medical and psychiatric communities’ attitude toward the impact of pregnancy on men. Written by William H. Wainwright, M.D., and published in the July 1966 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, it was called “Fatherhood as a Precipitant of Mental Illness.” (Another wonderful title that came out at about the same time was: “Psychoses in Males in Relation to Their Wives’ Pregnancy and Childbirth.”)

Lempriere's Bibliotecha Classica?" she said, reading the title. She looked up at him, her eyes wide. "How did you know?" He shrugged, and that lock of hair fell down over his brow at the movement. "I wasn't certain, but you said you liked mythology, and so I asked Mr. Woodson what the most likely book would be for a person who had those interests." He had gotten her a book. Not only that, but it was a book that meant something to her, a fact he couldn't possibly have known. And yet he knew her. "This is the same book I had when I was young." His smile was one of relief, and she felt oddly honored that he cared so much that his gift be a good one. He cared for her. And what she wanted, not what he thought she should want.

One result of the book boom was the growth of new publishers, who could use any paper they could find—they often advertised for ‘free’ supplies—and were not rationed to a fraction of their pre-war consumption. Lacking ‘back lists’ they specialised in new books and the public found it bewildering that new titles should constantly be published while textbooks and classics remained unobtainable.

It is of importance also that he refrain from burdening his wife with the cares and worries of his business day. Many writers insist that the wife should be ready to receive a complete consignment of all his troubles when the husband comes home at the end of the day. It is a sounder practise for him to save her as much as possible from the trials of his business hours; and, incidentally, it is the best kind of mental training for him to put all business cares behind him as he closes the door of his office and goes home.

should focus on. In Step 2, you take the general topics you came up with in Step 1 and niche them down by narrowing the audience and/or the outcome. You can accomplish that by looking at your own experiences, reading positive and negative reviews of similar books on Amazon, checking internet forums, and running surveys. The goal of this step is to write an output statement such as “My book will help ” so that you define the topic of your short book. In Step 3, you take that output statement from Step 2 and use it to create a few title and subtitle options for your book.  The

In everyday life we know that someone who is a true lover is very different from someone who is a pretender or a playboy. We know that true love should not be motivated at all by self- interest. And such is God’s love for us. It is a love that seeks the very best for us; it is sacrificial; it never stops giving. Perhaps the closest we can come to understanding the essence and quality of God’s love for us—though it is still a faint reflection of the reality—is the way in which we love our children. We bring these helpless, fragile little things home from the hospital and we love them. They have not done anything to deserve our love, indeed they are totally incapable of doing anything for us, yet we love them. From the moment we become a parent we know that from now on, life will pretty much revolve around our child and often they will inconvenience us in ways we can only dream of! Yet, we never stop loving them—really loving them. Parents and their children are a model to help us understand the way in which our Heavenly Father God really loves each one of us. As we think about how unconditionally we love our children and begin to grasp how complete and unconditional the Father’s love for us is, we can begin to scratch the surface of His grace and understand a little of the motivation behind God’s unmerited offer of salvation and forgiveness for our sins. Despite a lot of good teaching on the subject in the Church over the years, many Christians are still mystified by grace. They fail to live in the richness of it themselves and they fail to show grace to others. Many are still trapped by a performance-based theology that thinks God’s love must be earned or deserved. They think that if they behave well and perform good works for God then He will love them more. This is so far from the truth! God cannot love us any more nor any less than He does now, and He longs for us to live in the place of grace where we understand that He gives His love to us freely. God’s love and grace are gifts for us to receive. Do we ever deserve them? No! We are totally undeserving, but we are the undeserving who are the apple of His eye. GRACE AND FORGIVENESS The title of this book Grace and Forgiveness is purposefully chosen because the issue of God’s grace is vitally intertwined with the issue of forgiveness. They are not simply two distinct aspects of our spiritual life that we have decided to place together in the same book. When we come into a real understanding of the extent of God’s grace towards us and what that means, we begin to see how vital and necessary it is that we pass that grace and love on to others. Grace becomes an irresistible force in our lives. When properly understood, the “unfairness” and “injustice” of God’s grace towards us is deeply shocking, even offensive to our human understanding, as we will see. But in the same way that God lavishly and extravagantly pours His grace out upon our lives, He is calling us to learn how to show grace to others by forgiving those who truly don’t deserve it. The great discovery of forgiveness is that, through a selfless act, we open ourselves up to a greater outpouring of the blessing of God on our lives. There are two important things that every Christian needs to realize at some point in their journey as a believer, preferably sooner rather than later! The first is that our God is very big and very powerful and there is nothing that He cannot do. The second is that He is very loving and compassionate towards us. The Bible says that “God is love”. This is not a statement about what He does, but about who He is. He is the very embodiment of perfect, flawless love. His heart for us is to see us living our spiritual lives where we are operating with the dynamics of His Kingdom, just as Jesus did. It is a Kingdom of love, filled with faith, aware of the bigness of our God; aware of His willingness to interact with us and do things for us as we act in loving obedience to Him.

Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug is an excellent introduction to web usability. We passionately believe it should be on the school curriculum. Designed for Use by Lukas Mathis is less entertaining than Don’t Make Me Think, but it covers more usability concepts. If this book list seems worryingly short, that’s a testament to how much ground this book covers. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte contains many examples of complex data shown in beautifully elegant ways. Don’t be put off by its technical-sounding title. It’s fun to read.

Trying to keep Rohan out of her thoughts, wondering endlessly if she should apologize for throwing herself at him, she traveled from shelf to shelf, rearranging the books by language, by historical period, by size, as was practical, and above all, alphabetically, by the writer's last name. She had found multiple titles by individual authors scattered willy-nilly through the collection. It made her want to pull her hair out. Obviously!- an individual author's body of work all belonged on one shelf, the works arranged, in turn, by whatever system was most suitable: by volume number, alphabetically by title, or by the year of publication, or, in case of playwrights, works grouped by genre- tragedies with tragedies, comedies with comedies, histories with histories, and so on.

So let me say what already should be obvious: 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die is neither comprehensive nor authoritative, even if a good number of the titles assembled here would be on most lists of essential reading. It is meant to be an invitation to a conversation—even a merry argument—about the books and authors that are missing as well as the books and authors included, because the question of what to read next is the best prelude to even more important ones, like who to be, and how to live. Such faith in reading’s power, and the learning and imagination it nourishes, is something I’ve been lucky enough to take for granted as both fact and freedom; it’s something I fear may be forgotten in the great amnesia of our in-the-moment newsfeeds and algorithmically defined identities, which hide from our view the complexity of feelings and ideas that books demand we quietly, and determinedly, engage. To get lost in a story, or even a study, is inherently to acknowledge the voice of another, to broaden one’s perspective beyond the confines of one’s own understanding. A good book is the opposite of a selfie; the right book at the right time can expand our lives in the way love does, making us more thoughtful, more generous, more brave, more alert to the world’s wonders and more pained by its inequities, more wise, more kind. In the metaphorical bookshop you are about to enter, I hope you’ll discover a few to add to those you already cherish. Happy reading.

I could help you write to them, if that's why you're in here.' I jerked back in my seat, almost knocking over the chair, and whirled to find Tamlin right behind me, a stack of books in his arms. I pushed back against the heat rising in my cheeks and ears, the panic at the information he might be guessing I'd been trying to send. 'Help? You mean a faerie is passing up the opportunity to mock an ignorant human?' He set the books down on the table, his jaw tight. I couldn't read the titles glinting on the leather spines. 'Why should I mock you for a shortcoming that isn't your fault? Let me help you. I owe you for the hand.' Shortcoming. It was a shortcoming. Yet it was one thing to bandage his hand, to talk to him as if he wasn't a predator build to kill and destroy, but to reveal how little I truly knew, to let him see that part of me that was still a child, unfinished and raw... His face was unreadable. Though there had been no pity in his voice. I straightened. 'I'm fine.' 'You think I've got nothing better to do with my time than come up with elaborate ways to humiliate you?

The butter should still be cold. Remove it from the fridge just before. Superior-quality butter should be eaten when it's still cold and hard, to truly luxuriate in its texture and aroma. It will begin to melt almost immediately with the heat of the rice, but I want you to eat it before it melts fully. Cool butter and warm rice. First of all, savor the difference in their temperatures. Then, the two will melt alongside one another, mingle together, and form a golden fountain, right there inside your mouth. Even without seeing it, you just know that it's golden--- that's the way it tastes. You'll sense the individual grains of rice coated in butter and aromatic fragrance as if the rice were being fried will ascend to your nose. A rich, milky sweetness will spread itself across your tongue...

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were obsessed with me, Aibek.” But she doesn’t walk away. “I don’t think you should speak to a prince in that way,” I mock. “Perhaps titles are in order.” I take a step away from her and smile to myself when she follows. “Yeah? Well, my apologies. Which one should I use? Prince? Or pathetic?” I shrug. “You could have called me yours.

reason gives us tools to control nature. But it cannot indicate which uses of nature are good or humane. Reason shows us how to achieve our goals. But it cannot determine which goals are right to pursue in the first place. It ascertains what we can do, but not what we should do. What works, but not what is good. Facts, but not values. As a result, many people concluded that the only way to plumb the Big Questions was to “escape from reason” (the title of one of Schaeffer’s books). That is, to leave reason behind and take a leap of faith from the lower story to the upper story.

Dear friends and enemies, Season’s greetings! It’s me, Serge! Don’t you just hate these form letters people stuff in Christmas cards? Nothing screams “you’re close to my heart” like a once-a-year Xerox. Plus, all the lame jazz that’s going on in their lives. “Had a great time in Memphis.” “Bobby lost his retainer down a storm drain.” “I think the neighbors are dealing drugs.” But this letter is different. You are special to me. I’m just forced to use a copy machine and gloves because of advancements in forensics. I love those TV shows! Has a whole year already flown by? Much to report! Let’s get to it! Number one: I ended a war. You guessed correct, the War on Christmas! When I first heard about it, I said to Coleman, “That’s just not right! We must enlist!” I rushed to the front lines, running downtown yelling “Merry Christmas” at everyone I saw. And they’re all saying “Merry Christmas” back. Hmmm. That’s odd: Nobody’s stopping us from saying “Merry Christmas.” Then I did some research, and it turns out the real war is against people saying “Happy holidays.” The nerve: trying to be inclusive. So, everyone … Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah! Good times! Soul Train! Purple mountain majesties! The Pompatus of Love! There. War over. And just before it became a quagmire. Next: Decline of Florida Roundup. —They tore down the Big Bamboo Lounge near Orlando. Where was everybody on that one? —Remember the old “Big Daddy’s” lounges around Florida with the logo of that bearded guy? They’re now Flannery’s or something. —They closed 20,000 Leagues. And opened Buzz Lightyear. I offered to bring my own submarine. Okay, actually threatened, but they only wanted to discuss it in the security office. I’ve been doing a lot of running lately at theme parks. —Here’s a warm-and-fuzzy. Anyone who grew up down here knows this one, and everyone else won’t have any idea what I’m talking about: that schoolyard rumor of the girl bitten by a rattlesnake on the Steeplechase at Pirate’s World (now condos). I’ve started dropping it into all conversations with mixed results. —In John Mellencamp’s megahit “Pink Houses,” the guy compliments his wife’s beauty by saying her face could “stop a clock.” Doesn’t that mean she was butt ugly? Nothing to do with Florida. Just been bugging me. Good news alert! I’ve decided to become a children’s author! Instilling state pride in the youngest residents may be the only way to save the future. The book’s almost finished. I’ve only completed the first page, but the rest just flows after that. It’s called Shrimp Boat Surprise. Coleman asked what the title meant, and I said life is like sailing on one big, happy shrimp boat. He asked what the surprise was, and I said you grow up and learn that life bones you up the ass ten ways to Tuesday. He started reading and asked if a children’s book should have the word “motherfucker” eight times on the first page. I say, absolutely. They’re little kids, after all. If you want a lesson to stick, you have to hammer it home through repetition…In advance: Happy New Year! (Unlike 2008—ouch!)

Security shouldn’t enforce, they should massage situations, without laying a hand on a guest.

There should be a language called Nail, so I could more naturally say, “My nail is a bit rusty.

I should invent a stationary bike/electrical generator/phonograph player, so that when the grid goes down I will have motivation to exercise for my nightly entertainment.

I have failed, and I should bury my failure. I need a trowel (it was a small failure).

The greatest part of popish religion, of that which looks most like religion in their profession, consists in mistaken ways and means of mortification. This is the pretence of their rough garments, whereby they deceive. Their vows, orders, fastings, penances, are all built on this ground; they are all for the mortifying of sin. Their preachings, sermons, and books of devotion, they look all this way. Hence, those who interpret the locusts that came out of the bottomless pit, Rev. ix. 3, to be the friars of the Romish church, who are said to torment men, so 'that they should seek death and not find it,' verse 6, think that they did it by their stinging sermons, whereby they convinced them of sin, but being not able to discover the remedy for the healing and mortifying of it, they kept them in such perpetual anguish and terror, and such trouble in their consciences, that they desired to die. This, I say, is the substance and glory of their religion; but what with their labouring to mortify dead creatures, ignorant of the nature and end of the work, -- what with the poison they mixed with it, in their persuasion of its merit, yea, supererogation (as they style their unnecessary merit, with a proud, barbarous title), -- their glory is their shame

Scripture requires searching--much of it can only be learned by careful study. There is milk for babes, but also meat for strong men. The rabbis wisely say that a mountain of matter hangs upon every word, yea, upon every title of Scripture. Tertullian exclaims, "I adore the fulness of the Scriptures." No man who merely skims the book of God can profit thereby; we must dig and mine until we obtain the hid treasure. The door of the word only opens to the key of diligence. The Scriptures claim searching. They are the writings of God, bearing the divine stamp and imprimatur--who shall dare to treat them with levity? He who despises them despises the God who wrote them. God forbid that any of us should leave our Bibles to become swift witnesses against us in the great day of account. The word of God will repay searching. God does not bid us sift a mountain of chaff with here and there a grain of wheat in it, but the Bible is winnowed corn--we have but to open the granary door and find it. Scripture grows upon the student. It is full of surprises. Under the teaching of the Holy Spirit, to the searching eye it glows with splendour of revelation, like a vast temple paved with wrought gold, and roofed with rubies, emeralds, and all manner of gems. No merchandise is like the merchandise of Scripture truth. Lastly, the Scriptures reveal Jesus: "They are they which testify of me." No more powerful motive can be urged upon Bible readers than this: he who finds Jesus finds life, heaven, all things. Happy he who, searching his Bible, discovers his Saviour. __________________________________________________________________   Morning, June 10   [506]Go To Evening Reading   "We live unto the Lord."  

First: the title, which is based on the notion that there’s a God who created an entire universe, yet who has a super special place in his heart for fat, heavily armed Christians with high cholesterol. Second: the notion that folks in the flyover states possess a simple, yet superior down home wisdom that we big city elitists with our fancy educations just don’t get. I thought it was oily fish and blueberries that were brain food, not corn meal with goop poured over it. And last, it’s a book. And Huck’s people don’t read books. They burn them. Only liberals and socialists read books. He should have dropped it as a country song. He could’ve played bass on the track. And