the power of reading

A short film dramatizing the “power of reading” has won two Film Craft Lions awards at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. read an article about it and watch the film here.

quotes 3

this is the last installment of quotes for this month (seeing how it's the last day of the month). hope they inspire.

-"Can miles truly separate you...? If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?" - ?
-"You know you love someone when the mere thought of losing them brings you to tears."- ?
-"I wish that I could hold you now... I wish that I could touch you now... I wish that I could talk to you... be with you somehow." - ?
-"Good-bye is only truly painful if you know you'll never say hello again." -?
-"The few hours I spent with you are worth the thousand hours I spend without you." -?
-"Today was just one of those days where everything I did reminded me of you and every song I heard somehow related to you. I hate days like today, because they remind me of the one thing I dont have." -?
-"Just the thought of being with you tomorrow is enough to get me through today." -?
-"It's not a 'good-bye', only a long 'I'll see you later.'" - ?
-"when i think where a mans strength begins and ends, i think that i never had such a friend." - ?
-"i'll make you a mixtape that will charm you into bed. it details everything thats running round my head." - jamie cullum
-"love ain't gonna let you down no more." - jamie cullum
-"love is the triump of imagination over intelligence." - henry louis mencken
-"there is always some madness in love. but there is also always some reason in madness." - friedrich nietzsche
-"a good relationship is like fireworks: loud, explosive." - jeph jaques

wimbledon poetry

for this years wimbledon competition there is a poet in residence. and at poetry trust you can read his poetry. here is what he has so far.

fahrenheit 451 anyone?

so i know banned books week (bbw) isn't for another couple of months (it's september 25 - october 2) but i thought i would share some books that have been challenged to be banned, restricted or removed from school curricula and library shelves. the list comes from the american library association (ala) and from the office for intellectual freedom (oif).

top ten most frequently challenged books of 2009:
1. ttyl, ttfn, l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: Nudity, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs

2. “And Tango Makes Three” by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
Reasons: Homosexuality

3. “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Anti-Family, Offensive Language, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs, Suicide

4. “To Kill A Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee
Reasons: Racism, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

5. Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

6. “Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

7. “My Sister’s Keeper,” by Jodi Picoult
Reasons: Sexism, Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs, Suicide, Violence

8. “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things,” by Carolyn Mackler
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

9. “The Color Purple,” Alice Walker
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

10. “The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier
Reasons: Nudity, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

also this year, the ala and oif came out with the top 100 challenged books of 2000-2009.

and as a side note, i have read four of the books listed in the top 10 of last year. i have read numbers: 3,4,6 and 9. all were good books and i'm glad i read them.

things people say

i was talking to a friend of mine and he said this and i thought it was amazing. and so i knew i just had to share it here. he thought of it all by himself and everything.

"if missing you is a grain of sand, i had a whole beach."

usbtypewriter

do you miss the old typewriter feel? well, if you do, look no futher then the usbtypewriter. and really this video and article explain it better then i ever could. so go here and watch it's amazingness!

what are the billionaire's reading this summer?

i know i ask myself that question every summer. not. but it seems that the last 11 years jp morgan private bank has sent its clients a summer reading list, a list of 10 books specifically chosen for the bank’s rich clients. to create the list, jpm bankers from around the world submitted more than 450 nonfiction books for consideration. a committee then chose the top 10, based on each tome’s ability to “capture the essence of our clients’ personal and professional lives.”

here is the list of books for this summer:
- On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System by Henry M. Paulson Jr.
- Life is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment by Peter Buffett
- The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World by David Kirkpatrick.
- Written in Water: Messages of Hope for Earth’s Most Precious Resource by Irena Salina
- Mark Twain: Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years by Michael Shelden
- BlackBerry: The Inside Story of Research in Motion by Rod McQueen.
- The Principles of Thai Cookery by Chef McDang.
- Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout.
- Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century by Peter Galassi.
- Fine Wines: The Best Vintages Since 1900 by Michel Dovaz.

quotes 2

-"love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." - robert frost
-"there is no remedy for love but to love more." - henry david thoreau
-"age does not protect you from love. but love, to some extent, protects you from age." - jeanne moreau
-"ink on paper is as beautiful to me as flowers on the mountains." - audra fovea-alba
-"take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body." - oliver wendell holmes
-"all those glances that we stole sometimes if you want them then you've got to." - josh ritter
-"the president ain't got our cause he's seeling souls and breaking laws telling lies for the applause." - parlor mob
-"it is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening." - sue monk kidd
-"journalism largely consists of saying 'lord jones is dead.' to people who never knew that lord jones was alive." - g.k. chesterton
-"if your life had little meaning... your death has none." - ralph maccihio

library of the year

Ohio's Columbus Metropolitan Library (CML) is the winner of the Gale/Library Journal Library of the Year Award 2010. congrats to them! you can read all about the library in this article.

bill murray reads poetry

so when the poets house was getting a new building they had bill murray go to the construction site and be the first person to read poetry there. here is a video of some of the poetry he read.

em forster

em forster wrote a passage to india and other stories, while i have only read a passage to india, i enjoyed his writing. well, wendy moffat, associate professor of english at dickinson college, pennsylvania, uncovered while researching a new biography of the novelist, a 'sex diary' of his that said that the energy of his early years was drained by physical fulfilment. which i found interesting. before his death forster wrote that “I should have been a more famous writer if I had written or rather published more, but sex prevented the latter.”

i just found this so interesting! that his enjoyment of sex and his enjoyment of living life to the fullest prevented him from writing more. i guess sometimes the living of your life gets in the way of what your supposed to be doing in life. makes one think. if i go out and live my life and enjoy new experiences, will i be too occupied to write? there's no way of knowing that until i find something that makes me not want to write anymore. i don't see that happening for me. usually if i find a new experience and i enjoy it, i want to write about it. i'm bursting to write about it. i just can't stop writing about it. and if i can't stop writin about it, i'm definatly enjoying it and loving it. so yeah, just makes one think. either way i found it interesting that for him sex had him not write as much as he thought he should have.

the whole article written about the biography of em forester can be found here.

xkcd

poetry is found in all places. recently i was randomly looking at the web comic called xkcd and i found this comic. i thought it was brilliant and that i would share it with everyone. i love when i found poetry in random places.

it makes me think of the great scene from the last of the mohicans movie.

talk about some of the most romantic words. both from the movie and from the comic.

the effects of poetry on the mind

sean haldane a nominee for the post of professor of poetry at oxford, talks about his role as a neuroscientist and as a poet. i think this is a great read. i'll highlight a little bit of what he said.

"Q: Has work been done in studying the effects of reading poetry on the brain?
A: Neuropsychology can help to explain poetry, to demystify the impulse. There has been work done on why poetry can send shivers down our spine. The poem activates the same parts of the brain that react when a child is separated from its mother. A deep sense of separation and longing."

"Q: To borrow from psychoanalysis, do you think poetry gives closure on emotions?
A: I do think they finish things off, yes. Most of my poems are written in the heat of emotional things. I publish them much later. Someone once asked my wife what my poems were about. And she replied "what torments him". Because I am almost too close to them, it has taken me almost until last year to read them to other people."

quoteables

hurray it's june and i get to do another installment of quotes. i've been in a very quotey mood these days. so don't be surprised if there are more quoteables this month. hope they inspire.

-"i don't dream since i quite sleeping and i haven't slept since i met you." - alkaline trio
-"i think i love every single little crack on your face." - jamie cullum
-"how can you possibly reproach me for the phrase: 'i wish i had never known you!' i cannot think of anything more affectionate." - gustave flaubert's selected letters
-"stress is when you wake up screaming and you realize you haven't fallen alseep yet." - ?
-"some people hide themselves because they want someone to care enough to look for them." - mary from in plain sight
-"eventually, even stars burn out." - matthew stover
-"heaven's not a place you go after you die, it's that moment in life when you actually feel alive. so live for the moment now." - the tide
-"the worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." - sylivia path
-"fill your paper with the breathings of your heart." - william wordsworth
-"if i don't write to empty my mind, i go mad." - lord byron
-"an intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the william tell overture and not think of the lone ranger." - dan rather
-"a good photograph is knowing where to stand." - ansel adams