The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
Great piece by Anthony Gottlieb over at The Economist on one potentially big upside for e-readers over books–the ability to correct errors in real time, without the expense of pushing out a new set of copies. From a purely fiscal perspective, that’s a huge deal.
...moreThis week, the book blogs are scaring the ever-loving Jesus out of me.
Sure, there have been a few fun, interesting updates and interviews, but most of what they’ve been saying makes me want to build a series of tunnels in and around my house so that I can start planning the first push of the resistance.
...moreGeorge Orwell, who died at the age of 46, was one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, and arguably, given the way the Bush administration adopted many of Big Brother’s tactics, the twenty-first as well. A google search for the terms “Bush” and “Orwellian” returns upwards of 2.1 million hits.
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A blog about how famous books got their titles, peppered with amusing and surprisingly sexual anecdotes. John Cleland’s title Fanny Hill is dirty, but not for the reasons you might think. Marie Stopes’ 1918 Married Love might be the most sexually influential work of the 20th century, but its title is classic double speak that could have come right out of 1984.
George Orwell would not have liked the Super Bowl. In his 1945 essay “The Sporting Spirit” he writes, “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.” Orwell may have a point.
In Notes On Nationalism, George Orwell wrote, “All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts.” Glenn Greenwald compares Gaza with Orwell’s great essay.
From Pop Matters: “Orwell’s essays remind us that better than our best intentions is our inescapable nature, our shared ordinariness, which will always have the potential to redeem us all if only we will embrace it.” …read more
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