Jim Holt
Jim Holt looks for Something to Read in New York
Walter Benjamin wrote somewhere that a true bibliophile has no desire actually to read his precious books . Well, I wouldn’t know about that, for I am by way of being a bibliophobe. I prefer reissues to first editions, paperbacks to hardcovers, and bound galleys to paperbacks- though I draw the line at unbound galleys. I find the books that I have accumulated an oppressive presence and a great retardant to any sort of sustained intellectual labour, and I rejoice at the opportunity of tossing them out (I dare not give them away because of the imbecile marginalia I have usually scribbled in them). Qua physical objects, books are the curse of the thinking classes – and having recently lugged several dozen boxes packed with ponderous old tomes up four steep flights of steps into a new apartment, I can say this with more feeling than most.
For those who hate to have books piling up around the house, even libraries can be dangerous. It is too easy to end up like Nabokov’s poor Professor Pnin, who always had on his shelves a few hundred books borrowed from the Waindell College library (an early warning signal is
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Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
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literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm