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johnrakestraw

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Retired teacher of #philosophy and philosophical theology who once worked with faculty and graduate students to think deeply about #teaching. Longtime (and just knowledgeable enough to avoid the precipice) user of emacs and cli to pull together and access all sorts of ideas and data. Looking for more (and more and more) things to read, and struggling to find room for a committed introvert in online social space.

| #photography | #emacs | #bicycling | #FOSS | #linux | #politics |

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johnrakestraw , to bookstodon group
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Ann Patchett: “If a person of any age picked up the cello for the first time and said, ‘I’ll be playing at Carnegie Hall next month!’ you would pity their delusion, yet beginning fiction writers all across the country polish up their best efforts and send them off to The New Yorker” (‘This is the story of a happy marriage,’ p. 28).

Would that I had even a small bit of that courage (or audacity).

@bookstodon

seanbala , to bookstodon group
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At the store and came across a pretty discounted hardcover copy of "Demon Copperhead" by Barbara Kingsolver. It is worth purchasing a physical copy? I usually try to stick to library books and purchase books I really like, but the library wait list is long and the price is tempting.

About to travel and was looking for something good to read.

@books @bookstodon

johnrakestraw ,
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@seanbala @books @bookstodon can’t advise you re the purchase, but I’ll say I think it’s one of the best novels I’ve read in the last couple of years

bibliolater , to bookstodon group
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Irvine Welsh: ‘If reading gives you comfort, you’re not doing it right’

“The Scottish author on having his mind changed by Orwell, how Trainspotting was influenced by Ulysses, and his wariness of novels created with AI”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jun/21/irvine-welsh-if-reading-gives-you-comfort-youre-not-doing-it-right

@bookstodon

johnrakestraw ,
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@bibliolater @bookstodon

Love the quote you’ve pulled from this article!

(Though there are moments these days when I long for something comforting to read.)

johnrakestraw , to bookstodon group
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We’re all – trees, humans, insects, birds, bacteria – pluralities. Life is embodied network. These living networks are not places of omnibenevolent Oneness. Instead, they are where and tensions between cooperation and conflict are negotiated and resolved. These struggles often result not in the evolution of stronger, more disconnected selves but in the dissolution of self into relationship.
@bookstodon
--David Haskell, The Songs of Trees

johnrakestraw , to bookstodon group
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An interesting piece about , , and a bit on collecting . There’s some irony in owning a first edition of owned earlier by Dorothy Scarritt, Oppenheimer’s secretary at Los Alamos. And I had only a little twinge reading that one who just turned 40 might expect to read only 480 more books carefully if one manages to read one book a month.

Gift link: https://wapo.st/3K8hmHn

@bookstodon

johnrakestraw , to bookstodon group
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Rebecca Solnit: "Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand." @bookstodon

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