The fact of the matter is basic and ineluctable: we need these lists. The year would not be complete without them. The year would not make sense without them.
Americans love gumption. We believe that stupid ideas become brilliant ones if you just keep working on them with bullish tenacity.
The real reason to wear the mask is to spare others the discomfort of seeing your facial expression ... To make it possible to see without seeing.
They were dense and crisp and precise but also full of character: his mouse conveys something fundamentally mouse-ish, his ant has an essential ant-ness. His insects were especially beautiful.
The Rest Is Noise is cultural history the way cultural history should be written: a single strong narrative operating on many levels at once. What more do you want from a book? That it be intelligently, artfully, and lucidly written? It’s those things, too.
If there is no common culture, no common standards, then each group becomes an island; metaphorical sharks are perceived to cruise between the islands, so they have less and less to do with one another, and diversity becomes its opposite.
There is more than one way not to read, the most radical of which is not to open a book at all.
Turn to page 69 of any book and read it. If you like that page, buy the book.
To many readers, Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” is the most intimidating of literary monuments. It is there, like a vast, unexplored continent, and all sorts of daunting rumors circulate about life in the interior. But once you cross the border, you discover that the world of “War and Peace” is more familiar and at the same time more surprising than the rumors suggested.
What does it mean to be a writer? Constant self-monitoring to see if a thought is actually an idea.
When Ratatouille was released this past summer, I thought it was one of the best animated films I'd ever seen—certainly finer than anything else in that category that could come along in the same year. I still hold Pixar's gourmet rodent near to my heart, but now, one week before the end of 2007, comes Persepolis (Sony Pictures Classics), a completely different kind of animated movie that, even more than Ratatouille, reimagines what the medium can do.
In the season of gift-giving, the ratio of books bought to books read tilts heavily toward the bought.
Such gifts carry with them a whiff of self-congratulation, as well as flattery. They say: I’m smart, and I think you are, too.
Sometimes the idea of the book — and its physical presence — is as important as content. “I think they become features in the intellectual landscape,” said Alberto Manguel, author of “A History of Reading” and “Homer’s the Iliad and the Odyssey: A Biography,” out this month. “You don’t need to climb it or visit it, you just need to know it’s there.”
Everyone acts superior to lists (so arbitrary and invidious!), but the act is a bluff. The fact of the matter is basic and ineluctable: we need these lists. The year would not be complete without them. The year would not make sense without them.
So Say We All | Battlestar Galactica Propaganda Posters
Topic: Arts
12:37 am EST, Dec 22, 2007
Join the battle against Cylon tyranny! Show your true colors and support the cause by displaying these posters in the common areas of your ship. Officially sanctioned by Fleet Operations, each poster contains critical messages from the Colonial Ministry of Information that will help recruit, inspire and inform your fellow Colonial citizens.
It is more important for a critic to be interesting than to be right. To truly interest the reader, a critic must risk something and be prepared for the embarrassment that follows a questionable enthusiasm or the contrition that's the result of an ill-considered pan.
