Basically Myra » reading http://www.basicallymyra.com Just another WordPress weblog Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:49:40 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Kafka on Books (and Happiness) http://www.basicallymyra.com/2010/11/12/kafka-on-books-and-happiness/ http://www.basicallymyra.com/2010/11/12/kafka-on-books-and-happiness/#comments Fri, 12 Nov 2010 20:07:52 +0000 nmyra http://www.basicallymyra.com/?p=621 “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”

-Franz Kafka-

]]> http://www.basicallymyra.com/2010/11/12/kafka-on-books-and-happiness/feed/ 0 Reading http://www.basicallymyra.com/2009/05/19/reading/ http://www.basicallymyra.com/2009/05/19/reading/#comments Wed, 20 May 2009 02:11:00 +0000 nmyra http://www.basicallymyra.com/?p=308 I just received “Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment” from Amazon today. Looking forward to starting this one in the next few days.

Society Without God

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