Will Self at Kafka’s Wound
Or is it only that every generation manufactures the Kafka they want, and while in the middle of the last century, the Kafka whose minatory tales foreshadowed the Holocaust and Soviet totalitarianism was, in contemporary governmental-business jargon, fit for purpose, now we require another kind of Kafka altogether? The constant here, surely, is irony.
25 Handy Words That Simply Don’t Exist In English
Litost (Czech): a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery
Mamihlapinatapai (Yaghan): A look between two people that suggests an unspoken, shared desire
Waldeinsamkeit (German): The feeling of being alone in the woods
Yoko meshi (Japanese): literally ‘a meal eaten sideways,’ referring to the peculiar stress induced by speaking a foreign language
30 Gorgeous and Innovative Bookshelves
My picks of the lot are
Tree bookcase designed by Roberto Corazza. [via]
Bookwave Hanging Storage. [via]
Circular walking bookcase designed by David Garcia.
5 Famous Writers Who Loathe E-Books via Kuzhali Manickavel
“F— them, is what I say. I hate those e-books. They cannot be the future. They may well be. I will be dead, I wont give a s—.” — Maurice Sendak
“Yahoo called me eight weeks ago. They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’” — Ray Bradbury
Note: I do not necessarily agree with every link posted here. The views presented are of the author’s alone, and I post them out of interest.
In a Brown Study 