Fred's Place: The Summer Solstice

Today is the Summer Solstice

Shortest summer night. . .

In early morning, lamps still

Burning on the bay

- Shiki -

READING QUEUE

NOW READING:

Gregory Benford: Furious Gulf--Book 5 in his Galactic Center Series

Maxim Gorky: My Childhood

Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim

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IN QUEUE:

Yrsa Sigurdardottir: Last Rituals

Jo Nesbo: The Devil's Star

Andrea Camilleri: The Snack Thief

Bruce Sterling: Involution Ocean

Robert Silverberg (ed.): Far Horizons

Ursula Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness

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RECENTLY FINISHED:

G. M. Malliet: Death of a Cozy Writer

Friedrich Durrenmatt: The Pledge

Karin Fossum: When the Devil Holds the Candle

John Brunner: Stand on Zanzibar

Robert Sheckley: Crompton Divided

Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion

Michael Chabon: The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Leo Tolstoy: Resurrection

Kim Newman: Anno Dracula

MEDITATIONS

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“It is almost impossible to exaggerate the complete unimportance of almost everything.”

-anon-

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The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room, not try to be or do anything whatever.

- May Sarton -

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…that perfect tranquillity of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend, and a good library.

- Aphra Behn -

British playwright

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Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.
-- Lin Yutang --

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The solace of such work as I do

with brain and heart lies in this--

that only there,

in the silences

of the painter and the writer

can reality be reordered, reworked

and made to show

its significant side.

-- Lawrence Durrell --

from Justine

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Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of

non-essentials.

-- Lin Yutang --

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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

-- Arthur C. Clarke --

Profiles of The Future, 1961 (Clarke's third law)

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It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions

-- Thomas Henry Huxley --

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What is necessary, after all, is only this:
solitude, vast inner solitude.

To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours--that is what you must be able to attain.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke –

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It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.
-- Dame Rose Macaulay --

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For it is rude and tiresome to quarrel with everything not to our liking. [We] should be content to correct [ourselves].

-- Montaigne --

Chapter 26

from Essays

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A Noiseless Patient Spider

A NOISELESS patient spider,

I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to
connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor
hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

- Walt Whitman -

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FAVORITE BOOKS, AUTHORS, FILMS, MUSIC

Authors (fiction): Jane Austen, Lawrence Durrell, Walter van Tilburg Clark, Thomas Mann, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford
Authors (mystery): PD James, Giles Blunt, Eliot Pattison, Ingrid Black, Dorothy Sayers, Batya Gur, Bernard Knight
Authors (SF/F); JRR Tolkien, Gene Wolfe, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ray Bradbury, Ted Sturgeon, Alfred Bester, M. John Harrison
Book: Austen--Persuasion, Mansfield Park
Book: Thomas Mann--The Magic Mountain
Book: Tolkien--Silmarillion, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings
Book: Walter van Tilburg Clark--The Ox-Bow Incident, The City of Falling Leaves, The Track of the Cat, The Watchful Gods (short stories)
Book: Russell Hoban--Riddley Walker
Book: Ursula Le Guin--The Left Hand of Darkness
Films: Ikiru or just about anything directed by Akira Kurosawa
Music CD: Edgar Meyer and Bela Fleck--Music for the Two of Us
Music: Beethoven--Symphonies 3-9, Violin Concerto in D, piano concertos

Fred's Place

Saturday, June 20, 2009

The Summer Solstice

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A Noiseless Patient Spider

FAVORITE BOOKS, AUTHORS, FILMS, MUSIC