bookmania:

Book Mania’s Top 10 Recommended Books of 2012

1. “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro
2. “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green
3. “A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway
4. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky
5. “Written On The Body” by Jeanette Winterson
6. “Will Grayson, Will Grayson” by John Green and David Levithan
7. “The Realm of Possibility” by David Levithan
8. “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini
9. “Other Voices, Other Rooms” byTruman Capote
10. “You Shall Know Our Velocity!” by Dave Eggers

"What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."

—

Carl Sagan, AB’54, SB’55, SM’56, PhD’60

Big thanks to the JUChicago Tumblog, who noted this awesome quote on our dino-Sagan photo!

littleselfia:

bookporn:

As it reads: a book exchange blog, for the love of books!

If you want to participate, read how you can be part of this.

YES.

olplya:

Looking for something to read post-Hunger Games? Check out this great map. Whatever it was that you liked about Hunger Games (or other dystopia/science fiction/fantasy novels), you can find here!

(via littleselfia)

Book Spine Poetry: The Spark of Love

by Maria Popova

Hey, look, it’s more book spine poetry. (As a reminder, this literary remix experiment is inspired by artist Nina Katchadourian and her Sorted Books project from a few years back.) After the working theory of love, here comes love in practice — that moment when one heart sings to another and, just like that, magic materializes — captured in book spines:

After you
Talk to me,
Everything sings,
Everything is illuminated:
Instant love

The books:

• After You (public library) by Natascha McElhone
• Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects (public library) by Paola Antonelli
• Everything Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas (public library) by Denis Wood
• Everything Is Illuminated (public library) by Jonathan Safran Foer
• Instant Love: How to Make Magic and Memories with Polaroids (public library) by Susannah Conway, Amanda Gilligan, and Jenifer Altman

Catch up on previous book spine poems: The Future, Get Smarter, This Is New York, Music, and The Meaning of Life.

(via Book Spine Poetry: The Spark of Love | Brain Pickings)

"The love of books. My library is an archive of longings."

— Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

(Source: brainpickings.org)

Today’s library haul. #books (Taken with Instagram)

(Source: ohheyhottie, via imadandelion)

"What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."

— Carl Sagan on Books (via Brain Pickings)