Blogroll

Weekend Edition: 3-28

Bulletin Board

  • Late posting today because it’s my annual hockey binge weekend: 10 televised NCAA regional tournament games, with the added bonus of great Stampede games last night and Thursday

Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes

Least Surprising Headline of the Week

Bookish Linkage

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A man’s bookcase will tell you everything you’ll ever need to know about him.

Walter Mosley, The Long Fall

Ban my book… please

“Banned book” brings to mind censorship, repression. But a different facet intrigued Helen Gurley Brown 43 years ago when she wrote her publicist about her forthcoming book, Sex and The Single Girl — publicity.

Sex_and_the_Single_Girl_(first_edition_cover)Sex and The Single Girl was on the cutting edge of the cultural revolution in the 1960s and feminism. Some 40-plus years later, the book’s chapters on decorating, home entertaining, sewing and cosmetics seem a bit odd for a feminist book. Although the book’s title and content — including chapters on “How to Be Sexy” and how to conduct affairs — were alone sufficient to create a stir in 1962 America, Brown and her publicist, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, thought getting it officially banned would generate more publicity and sales.

In her letter, Brown told Cottin she wanted to explore getting “a public denunciation — a nice, strong, snarly, vocal one — from some religious leader.” She suggested the Catholic Church as a candidate. Although Cottin sent advance copies of the book to people she thought might object to its publication, no one rose up to actually ban the book. When Cottin finally suggested abandoning the effort, Brown wondered if the Daughters of the American Revolution might want to ban the book.

An actual ban wasn’t necessary for Sex and The Single Girl to capture attention, especially given a national ad campaign by the publisher. It sold more than two million copies in three weeks, was one of the 10 bestselling nonfiction books in 1962 and spent more than a year on the bestseller lists. A movie adaptation with Natalie Wood as Brown was released in 1964.

Even though Brown was unsuccessful getting her own book banned, you wonder if her efforts would be successful — or even necessary — today.


I don’t have to describe a married man. He is available for observation as the common housefly and about as welcome to many single girls as the common cold.

Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and The Single Girl

Weekend Edition: 3-21

Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes

  • In Defense of Difficulty (“A culture filled with smooth and familiar consumptions produces in people rigid mental habits and stultified conceptions. They know what they know, and they expect to find it reinforced when they turn a page or click on a screen.”)
  • In Defense of Boredom (“To be bored is to be unafraid of our interior lives — a form of moral courage central to being fully human.”)
  • The Confidence Conundrum (“On the surface, confidence appears to be an area where the rich get richer and the poor stay the fucking losers they are.”)

Blog Headline of the Week

Intelligent Statement of the Week Most Likely to Make Heads Explode

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A well-stocked mind is safe from boredom.

Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End

Weekend Edition: 3-14

Bulletin Board

Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes

  • Please Be Disturbed: Triggering Can Be Good for You, Kids (“Brutalities cry for attention. Attention to the appalling causes disturbance. Deal with it. You’re at school to be disturbed. Universities are very much in the business of trying to get you to rethink why you believe what you believe and whether you have grounds for believing it.”)

Blog Headlines of the Week

Bookish Linkage

Nonbookish Linkage


…we have made enormous progress in teaching everyone that racism is bad. Where we seem to have dropped the ball is in teaching people what racism actually is, which allows people to say incredibly racist things while insisting they would never.

Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, April 28, 2014

Weekend Edition: 3-7

Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes

Bookish Linkage

Nonbookish Linkage


If I ever got out of bed at night and didn’t have to step over a Labrador or two or three, or move one off the covers so I could turn over, my nights would be more restless and the demons that wait in the dark for me would be less easily fended.

Gene Hill, Tears and Laughter