How cool is this? You can read the classics for free on openlibrary.org.
Category archives: Bookish
Beautiful images of Turnbull Library books on Tumblr
So there’s a lovely Tumblr dedicated to images and information on some of the “rare books and fine printing” in the Alexander Turnbull Library. Follow!
Katherine Mansfield is Google doodled
Nice. New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) turned up in a Google Doodle on her 128th birthday. Katherine Mansfield and the Parliamentary Library The Parliamentary Library became a welcome retreat from what she regarded as the crass colonial life of Wellington. She was able to gain access to the library because of the political connections …
‘Quotation marks should not be used to dress up overstatement’
A few one-liners. “Headlines should not mislead the reader about a story’s contents and quotation marks should not be used to dress up overstatement” — Science Media Centre NZ’s Best practice guidelines for reporting on science “The death knell for any enterprise is to glorify the past no matter how good it was” — Jeff …
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Ah Montaigne, you’ve done it again
A few of my summer reads have overlapped in the realms of history and philosophy. In the mix was Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy. And there is consolation indeed in the words of long-dead men who could, but for their turn of phrase, be speaking today. Montaigne won my heart a little, not …
The beauty of checklists
I enjoyed The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, a surgeon and New Yorker writer who previously wrote a notable piece about finding that more expensive healthcare wasn’t necessarily better healthcare. He’s written a whole lot more since then. The premise of The Checklist Manifesto is that a simple (but well devised) checklist is perhaps the best tool we …