Gigantic Iceberg Seen By the Arctic Ships, From a Sketch by an Officer of the Valorous, Illustrated London News (1875)
Gigantic Iceberg Seen By the Arctic Ships, From a Sketch by an Officer of the Valorous, Illustrated London News (1875)
The Lost Garden, by Helen Humphreys
I need this book today. I love it too much.
Sonnet IX: There where the waves shatter Ripped by Axemurderess ⋅ 32,968 plays |
Andrew Scott reads: There where the waves shatter by Pablo Neruda
There where the waves shatter on the restless rocks the clear light bursts and enacts its rose, and the sea-circle shrinks to a cluster of buds, to one drop of blue salt, falling. O bright magnolia bursting in the foam, magnetic transient whose death blooms and vanishes - being, nothingness - forever: broken salt, dazzling lurch of the sea. You & I, Love, together we ratify the silence, while the sea destroys its perpetual statues, collapses its towers of wild speed and whiteness: because in the weavings of those invisible fabrics, galloping water, incessant sand, we make the only permanent tenderness.
(Source: mischalecters)
“Wednesday, January 17. T. -22° at start. Night -21°. The Pole. Yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected. We have had a horrible day. Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.”
I’ve seen people on tumblr (and elsewhere) bemoaning the disappearance of bookstores, independent or not, blaming everything from ebooks, pirated books, or even the fact that people just don’t read anymore (which I disagree with) and I want to quote the wonderful pada-viya. In her post she particularly talks about pagan bookstores (since she works at one) and pirated books, but I think it applies in general, and I think it’s very interesting:
The real problem for independent book sellers (and indeed, all brick and mortar book sellers), is Amazon. Amazon is evil. But also brilliant, I suppose. Amazon is able to offer books for such insanely cheap prices because they take a loss. They use books as “loss leaders” — they deliberately sell them at a price that loses them money, but it works in the end, because they make money on other things. Have you ever noticed how much of what Amazon sells isn’t books? And how cheap that other stuff isn’t? They bring people in with the cheap books, and mark up the prices on the other stuff they sell, and that’s how they make their money. And they have a lot of manipulative tricks in general that they use to cut out other businesses, not to mention their payment system is notoriously unsupportive for the people who provide the products to Amazon, including authors.
They do a lot of damage in the process. They create a culture in which consumers expect to buy books for less than they’re worth, for less than other booksellers can afford to sell them, for less even than publishers can afford to publish them at.
I’ve also read a while ago that while independent bookstores are struggling, used bookstores in general seem ti be doing okay, since their books are much cheaper. I personally have been buying 90% of my books in the past year in used bookstores and I love it. (can’t find the article right now though, so you don’t have to take my word for it).
