Motivational Monday: Accumulating Dreams

Motivational Monday: Oh, Misery!

Sunday Funnies: Not Your People

Umberto Eco: Anything but a commodity

"It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones.

"There are things in life that we need to always have plenty of supplies, even if we will only use a small portion.

"If, for example, we consider books as medicine, we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the 'medicine closet' and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That's why you should always have a nutrition choice!

"Those who buy only one book, read only that one and then get rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a good. Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity." 

            -- Umberto Eco, who owned 50,000 books

The Greatest Library in Heaven?!

You've just died and gone to Reader Heaven. As your eternal reward, you are given a library of every book written by any 25 authors (including those they only wrote in their imaginations) to read, re-read, and master forever and ever amen -- but no other books. Whom do you choose?

Me?

1. Kurt Vonnegut

2. Ray Bradbury

3. Zora Neale Hurston

4. Walter Mosely

5. Flannery O'Connor

6. H. Rider Haggard

7. Edgar Rice Burroughs

8. Ernest Hemingway

9. Bobby Nash

10. Derrick Ferguson

11. Barry Reese

12. Eudora Welty

13. Raymond Chandler

14. Dashiell Hammett

15. Robert Heinlein

16. William Shakespeare

17. C.S. Lewis

18. Shusaku Endo

19. Ed McBain

20. Ursula K. Le Guin

21. Langston Hughes

22. Annie Dillard

23. Donald Westlake

24. Lawrence Block

25. Christa Faust