confused of calcutta

It’s been a long day, coming at the end of a long week, tiring yet ultimately very fulfilling. I wanted something to read, something very special and very specific. Whatever I chose, it needed to meet the following criteria:

escapist and lighthearted yet not superficial and empty of meaning
easy on the brain, not a taxing read, [...]

[Read more →]

Neil Gaiman has found a fitting way of celebrating his blog’s 7th birthday. He, along with his publishers, is going to make one of his books freely available on the web. Which one?
It’s up to us. How nice. So vote away. Here’s the story, with the voting link in it.

[Read more →]

Stephen Smoliar was relentless in his insistence that I read Ferdinand Tonnies. And he was right to insist. I am now on my second, slow read of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Community and Society), as I strive to understand how he differentiated between the two and why. I will write more about what he says when [...]

[Read more →]

The passage below is from Gulliver’s Travels, Dean Jonathan Swift, Chapter 4. Amazingly out of copyright. [Shorely shum mishtake? Ed.]
One Morning, about a Fortnight after I had obtained my Liberty, Reldresal, Principal Secretary (as they style him) of private Affairs, came to my House, attended only by one Servant. He ordered his Coach to [...]

[Read more →]

One of the principles I’m trying to stay with in this series is to ensure that whatever I recommend is generally available; while I want to share “long tail” choices rather than “hit culture” ones, there is no point my doing so unless you can borrow it or buy it.
Recommendation 5: (Book)
The Education of H*Y*M*A*N [...]

[Read more →]

While returning from New York yesterday, I read David Rakoff’s Don’t Get Too Comfortable on the plane. Viciously funny. But that’s not the point of this post.
In a chapter entitled What Is The Sound of One Hand Shopping, Rakoff quotes the inimitable Lenny Bruce, saying:
Lenny Bruce described flamenco as being an art form wherein [...]

[Read more →]

“I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning; for that is a sure good. I would let him at first read any English book which happens to engage his attention; because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He’ll get better books [...]

[Read more →]

Last night I referred to this article in the New Yorker, and promised to revert to it today. So here goes.
The central premise is worrisome for someone like me, brought up in a culture of reading: that it’s not just my biased perception, people really are reading less. Why worrisome? Because of the implications of [...]

[Read more →]

A few days ago, I saw this story about people being advised to return their library books on time in order to avoid their credit ratings being affected.

I think this is wrong. It’s like telling people not to do stupid things and stick them into Facebook in case their job prospects are affected. I [...]

[Read more →]

It must be all of thirty years since I first read one of Harold Leavitt’s books, Managerial Psychology; since then, I’ve dipped into the book a number of times. But not as often as I’ve dipped into a more recent book of his, Hot Groups. Or, to use its more formal title, Hot Groups: Seeding [...]

[Read more →]