Author: seanv2
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How I Read 52 Books A Year
My goal, every year, is to read 52 books. Here’s how I do it (as randomly illustrated with pictures from the Wire): 1. I prioritize reading books. I endeavor to read, at least for a couple of minutes, everyday. I’m lucky in that I live in New York City, and can read for about an…
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Your Occasional Stoic — Do Not Mourn An Unknown Future; Do Not Fear Death
Even if you are going to live three thousand years, or as many times ten thousand years, remember that no man loses any other life than the one which he now lives, or lives any other life than the one he now loses. The longest and shortest are then to the same. For the present…
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Shaara’s Killer Angels
Killer Angels, Michael Shaara The book that really started my obsession with the civil war. A novel about the battle at Gettysburg told from the perspective of a commanders from both the Union and Confederate sides. A stunning work. I’m generally not a fan of military history, I could care less about troop movements and…
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1000 Little Memories: Here’s My Jimmy Breslin Story
Here’s my Jimmy Breslin story: I was working at the Center for Constitutional Rights on a campaign to stop the price gouging of collect calls from prisoners and I was pitching every single columnist in New York City to cover our story. The only person to call me back was Breslin. I was at dinner…
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Your Occasional Stoic — Pity the Gossiping Neighbor
Nothing is more wretched than a man who is always out and about, running around in circles. As Pindar says, the poet says, “delving deep in the bowels of the earth” seeking by conjecture what is in the minds of his neighbors, without perceiving that it is sufficient to attend to the divinity within him.…
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Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late
How Late It Was How Late James Kelman When I was twenty, I lived in Berkeley California and worked as a tele-fundraiser for a number of large nonprofits. Yes, I was the guy calling to ask you to donate to the Sierra Club. My co-workers were an incredibly eclectic mix of punks, artists, ex-cons, and…
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Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children
Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie Can Rushdie write? Yes, he prose is beautiful, if too baroque at times for me. I read this over a decade ago, and there are scenes I can still remember clearly. Can he craft a compelling story? Yes, as this story of the transformation of India, and those who lived there,…
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Proulx’s The Shipping News
The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx I read the Shipping News in 1997 when I was twenty-two years old. It is hard to articulate now the effect it had on me. It’s moving, its beautiful, and it’s the first time I self-consciously realized I was reading a literary novel. I’d read other serious novels before,…