sparks

bookriot: Which one does your book pile resemble? What Your...

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 19:04:00 +0200

Which one does your book pile resemble?

What Your Book Pile Says About You

Number two, although I pretend to be the first one -sigh-

the-final-sentence: January 5 - Umberto Eco Bio: Born on...

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 18:59:24 +0200

January 5 - Umberto Eco

Bio: Born on January 5, 1932, Umberto Eco is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist. He is best known for his groundbreaking 1980 novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose), an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. He has since written further novels, as well as academic texts, children’s books and many essays.

Anecdotes:

His family name is supposedly an acronym of ex caelis oblatus (from Latin: a gift from the heavens), which was given to his grandfather (a foundling) by a city official.

Eco claims that he wants his epitaph to be a quotation from a book by Tommaso Campanella: a character says “Wait, wait”, and the other replies “I cannot.”

Asked about his omnivorous scholarship, Eco takes a contrary stance, insisting that genuine learning demands a “stubborn incuriosity. Galileo appeared curious, but there were many subject matters he had simply cut away. According to Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes knew everything about chemistry, but he still believed the sun turned around the earth. In order to be so perceptive about the meaning of a spot on someone’s shoe, you have to ignore the solar system. As for my own incuriosities, I am so uninterested in them that I do not even know they exist.”

In an interview with the Washington Post, Eco declared that he considered it a compliment for his work to be described as difficult: “Only publishers and television people believe that people crave easy experiences.”

In one of his weekly columns he first mused upon the “software schism” dividing users of Macintosh and DOS operating systems. Mac, he posited, is Catholic, with “sumptuous icons” and the promise of offering everybody the chance to reach the Kingdom of Heaven (“or at least the moment when your document is printed”) by following a series of easy steps. DOS, on the other hand, is Protestant: “it allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions… and takes for granted that not all can reach salvation.” Following this logic, Windows becomes “an Anglican-style schism: big ceremonies in the cathedral, but with the possibility of going back secretly to DOS in order to modify just about anything you like.”

He is an avid book collector. He has a 30,000 volume library in his apartment in Milan and a 20,000 volume library in his vacation house near Urbino.

Final sentences:

[So I might as well stay here, wait, and look at the hill.] It’s so beautiful.

from Foucault’s Pendulum

I leave this manuscript, I do not know for whom; I no longer know what it is about: stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.

from The Name of the Rose

For heaven’s sake, I’m not yet a decrepit old fool.

from The Prague Cemetery

Sources: 1-2-3-4-5

saw-dustonthefloor: When I happen to encounter children I start fearing the future of the...

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 18:54:10 +0200

saw-dustonthefloor:

When I happen to encounter children I start fearing the future of the world

then I realize I’m related to them

"Enjoying a good work of literature entails getting lost. Vast and foreign is the journey, and we..."

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 00:12:25 +0300

“Enjoying a good work of literature entails getting lost. Vast and foreign is the journey, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. If the book is good, then the intelligence that guides us through the story will appear many degrees superior to our own.”

- Bryan Basamanowicz, “From the Library of Your Soul-Mate: The Unique Social Bond of Literature.” (via millionsmillions)

: All these feelings crammed inside of a bookshelf

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 00:08:16 +0300

: All these feelings crammed inside of a bookshelf:

saw-dustonthefloor:

I happened to come upon an existential thruth as I was looking through my bookcase. I was thinking, “Here, there are some books that I won’t mind giving away.” And as my eyes were roaming through the shelves, I’ve come to realize that there are also those books which I would always want to have…

"Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies..."

Fri, 04 May 2012 21:18:25 +0300

“Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.”

- C.S Lewis

(via bookriot)

vintageanchor: “The third-rate mind is only happy when it is...

Fri, 04 May 2012 21:17:18 +0300

vintageanchor:

“The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.”
—A. A. Milne

Photo

Fri, 04 May 2012 20:49:31 +0300

WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER WHEN YOU ARE IN A BAD MOOD?

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:22:53 +0300

Pretty colours and hot chocolate