Member: tomcatMurr

CollectionsYour library (1,019), Wishlist (1), Currently reading (2), All collections (1,020)

Reviews98 reviews

TagsLit Fic (485), Still Unread (224), Poetry (134), Rus (131), Really Great Book (116), Bio (112), Lit Crit (99), Hist (94), Phil (66), China (37) — see all tags

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GroupsBully's Tavern, Club Read 2012, Cult of Alexander Theroux (C.O.A.T.), Exotic Male Dancers Who LibraryThing, Fans of Russian authors, Friends of Mary Ann Evans, Happy Heathens, Infinite Jesters, Le Salon des Amateurs de la Langue, Le Salon des rôdeurs —show all groups, Recommend Life Improvements, The Diogenes Club, The Group Formerly Known as Trannys for Jaysus!, The Hellfire Club, The Underground, The Underground Bar and Grill

About me"No matter how much a man may study, reflect and meditate on all the books in the world, he is nothing more than a minor scribe unless he has read the great book."
Diderot

I am a reader in search of the great book, a minor scribe. I work in applied linguistics, but literature is an obsession. Reading is the most important and necessary pleasure in life.

True criticism is a search for beauty and truth and an announcement of them.
Robert Lynd

"The First Night
Night falls, soothing to lascivious old men
My cat, Murr, hunched like some heraldic sphinx,
Uneasily surveys, from his fantastic eyeball
The gradual ascent of the chlorotic moon.

The hour of children’s prayers, when whoring Paris
Hurls on to the pavement of every boulevard
Her cold-breasted girls, who wander with searching
Animal eyes under the pale street lights.

With my cat, Murr, I meditate at my window
I think of the newborn everywhere;
I think of the dead who were buried today.

I imagine myself within the cemetery,
Entering the tombs, going in place
Of those who will spend their first night there."
Jules Laforge

"Books became the first and only reality, whereas reality itself was regarded as either nonsense or nuisance. Compared to others, we were ostensibly flunking or faking our lives. But, come to think of it, existence which ignores the standards professed in literature is inferior and unworthy of effort."
Joseph Brodsky 'Less than One'

"Forgive us literature, forgive us our transgressions, as we forgive yours."
Dostoevsky 'Petersburg Chronicles'

"Culture is the best that has been thought and known in the world."
Matthew Arnold

"what's poetry, if its worth its salt
but a phrase men can pass from hand to mouth?
From hand to mouth, across the centuries,
the bread that lasts when systems have decayed..."
Derek Walcott 'The Forests of Europe'

You may follow my reading log here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/132379,

or visit my blog here:

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/

I am a cat with a catty sense of play. However, my intentions are always good so assume the best. A knowledge of Hoffmann helps.

To acknowledge a fake as fake contributes only to the triumph of accountants.
Werner Herzog

"Bhikkhus, consciousness is not self. Were consciousness self, then this consciousness would not lead to affliction, and one could have it of consciousness: 'Let my consciousness be thus, let my consciousness be not thus.' And since consciousness is not-self, so it leads to affliction, and none can have it of consciousness: 'Let my consciousness be thus, let my consciousness be not thus."
Buddha
Anatta-lakkhana Sutta
SN 22.59

Real nameWhat is reality?

LocationTaiwan

Favorite authorsNot set

Account typepublic, lifetime

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

Member sinceDec 8, 2006

Currently readingWomen, fire, and dangerous things by George Lakoff
Arjun and the Good Snake by Rick Harsch