Neil Postman’s life advice, Sauron’s eye (really??), Seth Godin talking books with Neil Pasricha, and much more in The Zone No. 16.

• Neil Postman’s Advice on How to Live the Rest of Your Life. I have always admired Postman and was delighted to find his life advice list online, compiled by his former student and colleague, Janet Sternberg. A few favorites:
  • Do not watch TV news shows or read any tabloid newspapers. Life is terrifying enough. Only a fool would expose himself to an exaggeration of the danger.
  • Establish as many regular routines as possible. The point is to reduce the number of decisions you have to make about trivial matters.
  • Carefully limit the information input you will allow. As a general rule, do not take in any more information after seven or eight o’clock at night. You need protection from the relentless flow of information.

• Paul Graham: How to Think for Yourself  

• Neil Pasricha’s interview with Seth Godin. An almost two hours long conversation about books and not only. Well worth the time!

• Ear Candy: Víkingur Ólafsson is a pianist from Island and an exclusive recording artist for Deutsche Grammophon. I find myself listening to two of his albums, Philip Glass Piano Works and Johann Sebastian Bach, almost daily. And I mean really listening to the music, and not using it as background when I’m working. I’m not sure whether it would work that way; the music forces you to abandon whatever you were doing and start paying attention.

• Are there too many books in the world? Nowadays, you’d think so, what with self-publishing a growing business, all those fancy online solutions, and everybody and his aunt dying to write books. Hold on. Complaints about the number of books in circulation started as soon as printing was invented. As they say, know your history. There’s nothing new under the sun. At least, not when people are complaining.

Complaints about too many books predate printing, including the biblical lament “of making many books there is no end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12) or the thirteenth-century prologue in which Vincent of Beauvais complained of “the multitude of books, the shortness of time, and the slipperiness of memory” that motivated him to write a compendium of all knowledge. 

• The History of the World According to Cats

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My Zone

A Quote I’m Pondering

There is, I hope, a thesis in my work: we may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. That sounds goody-two-shoes, I know, but I believe that a diamond is the result of extreme pressure and time. Less time is crystal. Less than that is coal. Less than that is fossilized leaves. Less than that it’s just plain dirt. In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats—maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats—but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. 

Maya Angelou

From My Photo Archives

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