The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “books”

Patti Smith on Libraries and the Transformative Love of Books
Patti Smith on Libraries and the Transformative Love of Books

On books, bronchitis, and a mother’s “sympathetic exasperation.”

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Bach and the Cosmos of Belonging: Michael Pollan on the Medicinal Power of Music
Bach and the Cosmos of Belonging: Michael Pollan on the Medicinal Power of Music

“Opened to the music, I became first the strings… and then the breeze of sound flowing past as it crossed the lips of the instrument and went out to meet the world, beginning its lonely transit of the universe.”

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Calculating the Incalculable: Thoreau on the True Value of a Tree
Calculating the Incalculable: Thoreau on the True Value of a Tree

“What would human life be without forests, those natural cities?”

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How to Raise a Reader: Mary Shelley’s Father on Parenting and How an Early Love of Books Paves the Path to Lifelong Happiness
How to Raise a Reader: Mary Shelley’s Father on Parenting and How an Early Love of Books Paves the Path to Lifelong Happiness

“The impression we derive from a book, depends much less upon its real contents, than upon the temper of mind and preparation with which we read it.”

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Poet Ross Gay on the Body as an Instrument of Thought and the Delights of Writing by Hand
Poet Ross Gay on the Body as an Instrument of Thought and the Delights of Writing by Hand

In praise of the manual-mental “loop-de-looping we call language.”

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How Hans Christian Andersen Turned His Heartbreak into One of the Most Beloved Fairy Tales of All Time
How Hans Christian Andersen Turned His Heartbreak into One of the Most Beloved Fairy Tales of All Time

Of harmonizing sorrow into song.

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Virginia Woolf on Why We Read and What Great Works of Art Have in Common
Virginia Woolf on Why We Read and What Great Works of Art Have in Common

“Our minds are all threaded together… Any live mind today is of the very same stuff as Plato’s & Euripides. It is only a continuation & development of the same thing. It is this common mind that binds the whole world together; & all the world is mind.”

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The Haunting Beauty of Snowflakes: Wilson Bentley’s Pioneering 19th-Century Photomicroscopy of Snow Crystals
The Haunting Beauty of Snowflakes: Wilson Bentley’s Pioneering 19th-Century Photomicroscopy of Snow Crystals

The quest to capture nature’s vanishing masterpieces, endowed with the delicacy of flowers and the mathematical precision of honeycombs.

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Here and Now: An Illustrated Guided Meditation Inviting the Practice of Noticing as a Portal to Presence
Here and Now: An Illustrated Guided Meditation Inviting the Practice of Noticing as a Portal to Presence

A sensorial serenade to the art of awareness.

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Consolation for Sorrow from King Arthur’s Court: Merlyn’s Advice on What to Do When the World Gets You Down
Consolation for Sorrow from King Arthur’s Court: Merlyn’s Advice on What to Do When the World Gets You Down

“Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.”

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