Tuesday November 03, 2009 at 7:08
how I discovered criticism
I’ve written elsewhere about my discovery of irony, but today I wish to remember my discovery of criticism.
Monday November 02, 2009 at 11:11
supernatural collective nouns
Monday November 02, 2009 at 8:29
wisdom and old age
All I want to do here is to juxtapose two quotations. The first comes from Philip Greenspun’s blog:
What has the increasing pace of technological development done to old people in our age?
Let’s…
Saturday October 31, 2009 at 12:41
a set of complcated jigs
A tradition, however firmly rooted, if it is never watered, though it dies hard, yet in the end it dies. And today a great number — perhaps the majority — of the men and women who handle our…
Friday October 30, 2009 at 12:27
making a dictionary
This is beautiful.
Pictorial Webster’s: Inspiration to Completion from John Carrera on Vimeo.
Via Urge of the Letter.Friday October 30, 2009 at 8:12
introducing a Text Patterns recurrent feature: Charts!

I am fascinated by charts — more specifically, charts used to provide visual representations of complex ideas or sequences. They’re a variety of mind map, I guess, though they represent…
Thursday October 29, 2009 at 16:45
five books I've started but am a long way from finishing
I hate it when this happens. I really prefer reading one book at a time, but sometimes I get squirrelly.
- Fleming Rutledge, The Battle for Middle-Earth (surprisingly — to me — interesting and…
Thursday October 29, 2009 at 15:17
1 noteten books I really wish I had time to re-read
- Eric Havelock, Preface to Plato
- Gregory Dix, The Shape of the…
Wednesday October 28, 2009 at 7:57
life imitates Text Patterns
In particular, my post the other day about the Kindle user trying a book for the first time. Marco Arment on the Kindle experience of his significant other:
Tiff plowed through more than 20…
Tuesday October 27, 2009 at 7:18
"minority cult"
That’s how Alison Flood in the Guardian characterizes Philip Roth’s thoughts about the future of the novel. (The adjective is redundant, isn’t it? I mean, doesn’t “cult” — in that use of the term…
Monday October 26, 2009 at 7:23
the Kindle user after trying his first "book"
… Look, I’m not saying there’s nothing good about it. That it’s just one book, so if you lose it you’re only out a few bucks, that’s nice. That you don’t have to worry about charging the…
Friday October 23, 2009 at 19:38
2 notesescaping
It’s interesting that the NYT today ran one story about people who refuse to have cellphones and another story about people who want to escape being always connected to the Internet. This meme…
Friday October 23, 2009 at 7:48
augmented books
I tweeted a while back my sense that I should post something about this conversation about e-books and the future of reading, but all I have time for right now is a quote from David Gelernter’s…
Thursday October 22, 2009 at 15:14
the way it was
Last Tuesday evening I attended a lecture by Walter Hooper, the long-time prime custodian of C. S. Lewis’s literary estate. He was narrating the history of his involvement with Lewis’s writings,…
Thursday October 22, 2009 at 8:52
Ulysses Seen
James Joyce’s Ulysses is a great, great book — not a simple book, not a flawless book, not a book without pathologies, but a truly great book. It is one of my real privileges to be able to teach it…
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