Al-Jahiz: In Praise of Books

Al-Jahiz: In Praise of Books
Author: James E. Montgomery
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2013-11-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 074868333X

Edinburgh University Press will publish two self-contained guides to reading al-Jahiz that also shed light on his society and its writings. This first volume, 'In Praise of Books', is devoted to bibliomania and al-Jahiz's bibliophilia. Volume 2, In Censure of Books, explores Al-Jahiz's bibliophobia. Al-Jahiz was a bibliomaniac, theologian, and spokesman for the political and cultural elite, a writer who lived, counselled and wrote in Iraq during the first century of the 'Abbasid caliphate. He advised, argued and rubbed shoulders with the major power brokers and leading religious and intellectual figures of his day, and crossed swords in debate and argument with the architects of the Islamic religious, theological, philosophical and cultural canon. His many, tumultuous writings engage with these figures, their ideas, theories and policies. They give us an invaluable but much-neglected window onto the values and beliefs of this cosmopolitan elite.

Faint Praise

Faint Praise
Author: Gail Pool
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2007-07-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0826217273

"Pool's behind-the-scenes look at the institution of book reviewing analyzes how it works and why it often fails, describes how editors choose books for review and assign them to reviewers, examines the additional roles played by publishers, authors, and readers and contrasts traditional reviewing with newer, alternative book coverage"--Provided by publisher.

In Praise of Good Bookstores

In Praise of Good Bookstores
Author: Jeff Deutsch
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2024-09-24
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0691229651

From a devoted reader and lifelong bookseller, an eloquent and charming reflection on the singular importance of bookstores Do we need bookstores in the twenty-first century? If so, what makes a good one? In this beautifully written book, Jeff Deutsch—the former director of Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstores, one of the finest bookstores in the world—pays loving tribute to one of our most important and endangered civic institutions. He considers how qualities like space, time, abundance, and community find expression in a good bookstore. Along the way, he also predicts—perhaps audaciously—a future in which the bookstore not only endures, but realizes its highest aspirations. In exploring why good bookstores matter, Deutsch draws on his lifelong experience as a bookseller, but also his upbringing as an Orthodox Jew. This spiritual and cultural heritage instilled in him a reverence for reading, not as a means to a living, but as an essential part of a meaningful life. Central among Deutsch’s arguments for the necessity of bookstores is the incalculable value of browsing—since, when we are deep in the act of looking at the shelves, we move through space as though we are inside the mind itself, immersed in self-reflection. In the age of one-click shopping, this is no ordinary defense of bookstores, but rather an urgent account of why they are essential places of discovery, refuge, and fulfillment that enrich the communities that are lucky enough to have them.

In Praise of Copying

In Praise of Copying
Author: Marcus Boon
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2010
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0674047834

This book is devoted to a deceptively simple but original argument: that copying is an essential part of being human, that the ability to copy is worthy of celebration, and that, without recognizing how integral copying is to being human, we cannot understand ourselves or the world we live in. In spite of the laws, stigmas, and anxieties attached to it, the word “copying” permeates contemporary culture, shaping discourse on issues from hip hop to digitization to gender reassignment, and is particularly crucial in legal debates concerning intellectual property and copyright. Yet as a philosophical concept, copying remains poorly understood. Working comparatively across cultures and times, Marcus Boon undertakes an examination of what this word means—historically, culturally, philosophically—and why it fills us with fear and fascination. He argues that the dominant legal-political structures that define copying today obscure much broader processes of imitation that have constituted human communities for ages and continue to shape various subcultures today. Drawing on contemporary art, music and film, the history of aesthetics, critical theory, and Buddhist philosophy and practice, In Praise of Copying seeks to show how and why copying works, what the sources of its power are, and the political stakes of renegotiating the way we value copying in the age of globalization.

A Book of Common Praise

A Book of Common Praise
Author: Robert Boyers
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2002
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9781931337021

Miniature critical essays on contemporary poetry and fiction. In only a few pages, Boyers can encapsulate an entire career, revealing with fesh immediacy the power, obsessions, and surprises of the work at hand. Marvelous models for the short critical essay.

Praise

Praise
Author: Andrew McGahan
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2005-09-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1743432135

Praise is an utterly frank and darkly humorous novel about being young in the Australia of the 1990s. A time when the dole was easier to get than a job, when heroin was better known than ecstasy, and when ambition was the dirtiest of words. A time when, for two hopeless souls, sex and dependence were the only lifelines. 'McGahan's book is a bracing slap in the face to conventional platitudes and hypocrisies.' - The Australian 'Praise is one of those books that takes a hefty bite out of a piece of subject matter, chews it to a pulp and then spits it out.' - Peter Craven 'A tour de force... revelation of life in the slow lane of drugs and sex and alcohol.' - The Weekend Australian Winner of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in the Pacific Region. Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award, the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature and the Canada-Australia Literary Award.

In Praise of Wasting Time

In Praise of Wasting Time
Author: Alan Lightman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2018-05-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1501154370

In this timely and essential book that offers a fresh take on the qualms of modern day life, Professor Alan Lightman investigates the creativity born from allowing our minds to freely roam, without attempting to accomplish anything and without any assigned tasks. We are all worried about wasting time. Especially in the West, we have created a frenzied lifestyle in which the twenty-­four hours of each day are carved up, dissected, and reduced down to ten minute units of efficiency. We take our iPhones and laptops with us on vacation. We check email at restaurants or our brokerage accounts while walking in the park. When the school day ends, our children are overloaded with “extras.” Our university curricula are so crammed our young people don’t have time to reflect on the material they are supposed to be learning. Yet in the face of our time-driven existence, a great deal of evidence suggests there is great value in “wasting time,” of letting the mind lie fallow for some periods, of letting minutes and even hours go by without scheduled activities or intended tasks. Gustav Mahler routinely took three or four-­hour walks after lunch, stopping to jot down ideas in his notebook. Carl Jung did his most creative thinking and writing when he visited his country house. In his 1949 autobiography, Albert Einstein described how his thinking involved letting his mind roam over many possibilities and making connections between concepts that were previously unconnected. With In Praise of Wasting Time, Professor Alan Lightman documents the rush and heave of the modern world, suggests the technological and cultural origins of our time-­driven lives, and examines the many values of “wasting time”—for replenishing the mind, for creative thought, and for finding and solidifying the inner self. Break free from the idea that we must not waste a single second, and discover how sometimes the best thing to do is to do nothing at all.

In Praise of Flattery

In Praise of Flattery
Author: Willis Goth Regier
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2007-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0803239696

Where would we be without flattery? Hobbes deemed it an honorable duty and Meredith called it the ?finest of the arts.? Alexander the Great applied it as imperial policy; Caesar and Cleopatra were masters of it; and Napoleon devoured it like candy. But flattery also has influential enemies. Cicero called flattery ?the handmaid of vice? and Tacitus compared it to poison.ø ø In a work as erudite as it is entertaining, Willis Goth Regier looks into flattery as an element as flammable (and as taken for granted) as oxygen. Giving flattery light, attention, and care, Regier treats readers to hundreds of historical examples drawn from the highest social circles in politics, romance, and religion, from the courts of Byzantium and China to Paris, Rome, and Washington, DC. ø Because flattery must please, it is playful and creative, and Regier?s book makes the most of it, moving with light steps, now and then pausing to take in the view. Ambitious flatterers even seek to flatter God, a practice Regier treats with trepidation. This is a book for those who would understand the history, tactics, and pleasures of flattery, not least the thrill of danger. ø ?O, flatter me, for love delights in praises.??Shakespeare ø ?The whole World and the Bus?ness of it, is Manag?d by Flattery and Paradox; the one sets up False Gods, and the other maintains them.??Sir Roger L?Estrange ø ?Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.??Samuel Johnson ø ?In this disorganized society, in which the passions of the people are the sole real force, authority belongs to the party that understands how to flatter.??Hippolyte Taine

The Waves of Dissonance

The Waves of Dissonance
Author: Andrea Clark
Publisher:
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2020-10-09
Genre:
ISBN:

Fans of The Handmaid's Tale, Brave New World, and the Manchurian Candidate, will enjoy this fast-paced, not-so-distant futuristic sci-fi thriller where New America's two opposing presidential candidates are using mind-control to start another Civil War. Only this time, it's a war between the sexes. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Kat has never seen a man: not even a photo. Growing up in an all-female society east of the Mississippi River, she has only heard stories-about how "those people" are grotesque, hairy, and violent. Kat knows her government is lying (at least about the violent part): she and Jordan have been telepathically connected for years, ever since childhood, and she knows everything about him. Or, at least, she thinks she does. In Day one of this three-day saga, Kat sets out to finally meet Jordan in person. When she does, she upsets a dangerous web of mind-altering goverment wavelengths (Adrays), and becomes a pawn in the Adray inventor's plot to start a war. Will those unaffected by the Adrays rise to help her? Or is it too late to change both societies' cognitive dissonance?

Couldn't Keep It to Myself

Couldn't Keep It to Myself
Author: Wally Lamb
Publisher: Harper
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2003-01-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780060534295

What I hope is that people reading this book will bear in mind that we are human beings first, inmates second. --Bonnie Foreshaw In a stunning new work of insight and hope, New York Times bestselling author Wally Lamb once again reveals his unmatched talent for finding the humanity in the lost and lonely and celebrates the transforming power of the written word. For the past several years, Lamb has taught writing to a group of women prisoners at York Correctional Institution. At first mistrustful of Lamb, one another, and the writing process, over time these students let down their guard, picked up their pens, and discovered their voices. In this unforgettable collection, the women of York describe in their own words how they were imprisoned by abuse, rejection, and their own self-destructive impulses long before they entered the criminal justice system. Yet these are stories of hope, humor, and triumph in the face of despair. Having used writing as a tool to unlock their creativity and begin the process of healing, these amazing writers have left victimhood behind. In his powerful introduction, Lamb describes the incredible journey of expression and self-awareness the women took through their writings and shares how they challenged him as a teacher and as a fellow author. In "Hair Chronicles," Tabatha Rowley tells her life history through her past hairstyles -- outer signals to the world each time she reinvented herself and eventually came to prize her own self-worth. Brenda Medina admits in "Hell, and How I got Here" that she continued to rebel in prison until her parents' abiding love made her realize that her misbehavior was hurting them and herself deeply. In "Faith, Power, and Pants," Bonnie Foreshaw describes how faith has carried her through trials in life and in prison and has allowed her to understand her past actions, to look toward the future, and to believe that she will once again taste home cooking. Couldn't Keep It to Myself is a true testament to the process of finding oneself and working toward a better day.