John Jeremiah Sullivan

on winning a Windham Campbell prize:

Found in books - 8

In A Handelian's Notebook, by William C Smith:

If. Only.

And other things never overheard at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst*

As a Marine* lieutenant, I had always been told in times of uncertainty to go to the library.

- David J Morris, The Evil Hours: a Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

--
* don't bother.

On Oxford

There are people who think contraception is immoral because the object of copulation is procreation. In a similar way there are people who think the only reason to read a book is to write a book; people should call up books from the dust and the dark and write thousands of words to be sent down to the dust and the dark which can be called up so that other people can send further thousands of words to join them in the dust and the dark. Sometimes a book can be called from the dust and the dark to produce a book which can be bought in shops, and perhaps it is interesting, but the people who buy it and read it because it is interesting are not serious people, if they were serious they would not care about the interest they would be writing thousands of words to consign to the dust and the dark.

- Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai

There's more to life than books, you know...

but not much more.

Mostly awful (but kudos for effort): librarian tattoos!

Not an April Fool(?)

Harvard librarians make a point of not going looking for rare volumes bound with human skin.

They don't write 'em like that any more!

Books I've actually finished lately: 3

NB Ian Sansom is additionally co-author/-editor of The Enthustiast Field Guide to Poetry, an inexplicably un-famous volume that absolutely no home (or English teacher's classroom) should be without.

Two good news

1) William Boyd has been booked to write the next James Bond (novel, not movie).

2) Some American woman* who writes novels ('novels') in txt [sic] has become the most complained-about author in the US library system. (Though not, of course, on account of her abuse of the English language.)

--
* Her name is Lauren Myracle - which I reckon is about all you need to know.

[*horror!*]

Charlotte Ledger ‏ @girl_on_a_ledge
@MargaretAtwood Mills&Boon are at rally against library funding cuts in London today. Please retweet to show your support! #savelibraries

Retweeted by Margaret E. Atwood

Found in books - 3

In a discarded library copy [for shame!] of WG Sebald's On The Natural History of Destruction:

1) A stamp reading

LANGUAGES, LIT/FICTION DIVISION
HAMILTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
55 YORK BLVD.
HAMILTON, ONTARIO
L8R 3KI

which I think says everything you need to know about Sebald's writing; the confusions book-folks get themselves into by trying to classify things (too cleverly or too simply: what is translated work doing under 'LANGUAGES'?); and the unanswerable but nonetheless interesting question of where exactly the line falls between literature and (all other) fiction, and/or whether it falls there at all.

2) A yellow slip bearing an invitation from BetterWorldBooks to 'help improve delivery times'. With which I would have no problem (in principle, you understand: I still wouldn't actually fill it in), were it not signed off

My friends look forward to hearing from you

- Sincerely, Your Book

Gah!

Honouring wood

I have been sitting at this desk for hours, staring into the darkened shelves of books. I love their presence, the way they honour the wood they rest upon.

- Brautigan, The Abortion: an historical romance 1966

Careers advice

I am thirty-one years old and never had any formal ... training. I have had a different kind of training which is quite compatible... I have an understanding of people and I love what I am doing.

- Brautigan, The Abortion: an historical romance 1966

On lust and the library

There is no certain way of preserving chastity against the will of the body. Lao-Tsu did. But then he was eighty and he was a librarian.

- Palinurus (Cyril Connolly), The Unquiet Grave