view larger

Member: stephenjchow

CollectionsHeavy Metal & Miscellaneous Albums (43), Your library (1,111), Wishlist (363), All collections (1,154)

Reviews3 reviews

Tagswishlist (357), Painting and Drawing (97), Anthology (87), Essays (73), Books about Books (65), Bookbinding (37), Read 2008 (29), Letters (26), Philosophy (24), Education (22) — see all tags

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud

Groups20-Something LibraryThingers, Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts, Antiquarian Books, Atheism and humanism, Atheists review books, Book Arts, Book Care and Repair, Book Collectors, Book Design!, Bookcases: If You Build/Buy Them, They Will Fill — show all groups , Books on Books, Books that made me think, Bostonians, Brandeis University community, Christianity, Combiners!, Geeks who love the Classics, George Macy devotees, Happy Heathens, Heavy Metal, Literary Snobs, Maps and Atlases, Non-Fiction Readers, Political Conservatives, What Are You Reading Now?

Favorite authorsMortimer J. Adler, Kenyon Cox, Joseph Epstein, Clifton Fadiman, John Lubbock, H. L. Mencken, James V. Schall, Louis Untermeyer (Shared favorites)

Favorite bookstoresBoston Book Annex, Boston Book Company, Raven Used Books, The Book Den East

Favorite librariesPublic Library of Brookline

About meDesire to know why, and how,
curiosity, which is a lust of the mind,
that by a perseverance of delight
in the continued
and indefatigable generation of knowledge,
exceedeth the short vehemence
of any carnal pleasure.

Hobbes, from The Practical Cogitator

About my libraryThe books labeled with five stars are with me every day and never fail to please. I am in the process of acquiring all of the books listed in my wish list, but because I am constantly adding to it, I may never bridge the gap. As for books, my library primarily reflects interests in: nature, art and beauty, refined craftsmanship--its recovery and preservation through schools and ateliers, painting and drawing the human nude, landscape and wildlife painting, anthologies, conduct of life, bibliomania, typography, leather bookbindings, cultural conservatism, essayists, poetry and prose, the pursuit of liberal education, philosophy, natural history, classical architecture, etc.

Collectively, my favorite metal albums surpass even my favorite books in pure enjoyment and ability to stimulate contemplation. I dearly hope that you will enjoy them as well. For your listening pleasure, I have linked my favorite track off of each album via YouTube, where you will usually find links to additional band info, lyrics, and their official websites. I use Grado SR-80 headphones and a 5-gain mini^3/Alien DAC combo built by vvs_75 from head-fi.org. The latter converts the digital audio signal from my computer into analog, and is paired with a powerful headphone amplifier. For speakers, I use this device through black Audioengine 2's.

My process for finding books is as follows: Shelf-read entire call number sections of interest in a nearby university library (I focus on A's, Z's, ND's, PR's, PN's, and Oversize/Folio at Boston College O'Neill Library), examine the contents of any book that catches my eye, and record the title, author, and date to purchase when the price is right. The books that catch my eye first are well-bound and designed and generally published between 1900-1995. Entering their call numbers into the Library of Congress database and exploring the books with similar call numbers will fill in many gaps. Revisit the same shelves as tastes change and curiosity increases.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such
desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his
companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let
him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree
or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition
of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality
which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain
reality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over
ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at
the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not?
The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my
soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be
my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?
You may say the wisest thing you can, old man -- you who have lived
seventy years, not without honor of a kind -- I hear an irresistible
voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons
the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn
what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I
had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is
so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite
necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of
life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all
that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive
life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it
proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of
it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to
know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in
my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange
uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have
somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to
"glorify God and enjoy him forever."
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be
thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that
falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast,
gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company
go, let the bells ring and the children cry -- determined to make a
day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let
us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool
called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this
danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With
unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another
way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it
whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why
should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like.
Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward
through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition,
and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe,
through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord,
through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and
religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we
can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin,
having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place
where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely,
or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future
ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had
gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to
face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces,
as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you
through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your
mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we
are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel
cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our
business.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but
while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.
Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink
deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I
cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I
have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was
born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way
into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with
my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all
my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my
head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout
and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through
these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts;
so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I
will begin to mine.
I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I
often did better than this. There were times when I could not
afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work,
whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life.
Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I
sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery,
amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude
and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless
through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or
the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was
reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in
the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would
have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much
over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals
mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most
part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to
light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening,
and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the
birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the
sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had
I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my
nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any
heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the
ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is
said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one
word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward
for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing
day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but
if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should
not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in
himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly
reprove his indolence.
I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps
it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not
spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and
insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track
for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a
path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six
years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I
fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it
open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet
of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and
dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of
tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage,
but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for
there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not
wish to go below now.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances
confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live
the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success
unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will
pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws
will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old
laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal
sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of
beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the
universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be
solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have
built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where
they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Selections from Walden, by Thoreau. From The Practical Cogitator.

Homepagehttp://stephenjchow.carbonmade.com/

Real nameStephen Chow

LocationBrookline, MA (Cleveland Circle)

Emailschowbrandeis.edu

Account typepublic, lifetime

Connection NewsConnection News

URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/stephenjchow (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/stephenjchow (library)

Common KnowledgeSeries (37), Awards (69), Characters (410), Places (115)

Member sinceDec 28, 2007