CoachJim

Add friend
Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about CoachJim.


Myth America: His...
Rate this book
Clear rating

 
Loading...
Vladimir Nabokov
“We are now ready to tackle Dickens. We are now ready to embrace Dickens. We are now ready to bask in Dickens. In our dealings with Jane Austen we had to make a certain effort to join the ladies in the drawing room. In the case of Dickens we remain at table with our tawny port. With Dickens we expand. It seems to me that Jane Austen's fiction had been a charming re-arrangement of old-fashioned values. In the case of Dickens, the values are new. Modern authors still get drunk on his vintage. Here, there is no problem of approach as with Austen, no courtship, no dallying. We just surrender ourselves to Dickens' voice--that is all. If it were possible I would like to devote fifty minutes of every class meeting to mute meditation, concentration, and admiration of Dickens. However my job is to direct and rationalize those meditations, that admiration. All we have to do when reading Bleak House is to relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder-blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle. Let us be proud of being vertebrates, for we are vertebrates tipped at the head with a divine flame. The brain only continues the spine, the wick really runs through the whole length of the candle. If we are not capable of enjoying that shiver, if we cannot enjoy literature, then let us give up the whole thing and concentrate on our comics, our videos, our books-of-the-week. But I think Dickens will prove stronger.”
Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature

Murray Pura
“Christianity was not meant to be a weapon or an argument or a show of force or a political tool. Or an act of aggression or coercion. It was never meant to be a cause or a prop for a cause. Or something to pacify and make thousands go to bed happy and unthinking. It was meant to be a challenge, yes, but that challenge to a second life was meant to be laced with kindness. If someone forces you to choose between God is holy and God is love choose God is love because holiness without love translates into tyranny.”
Murray Pura

Amor Towles
“I'm willing to be under anything...as long as it isn't somebody's thumb.”
Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

Mat Johnson
“It is a great moment in every freak's life when he or she finds out that at least they are not the only one.”
Mat Johnson, Pym

Oscar Wilde
“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

year in books
Colleen...
2,170 books | 436 friends

Todd
1,191 books | 317 friends

David E...
970 books | 96 friends

Greg
985 books | 118 friends

Debbie W.
1,868 books | 908 friends

Joe Stack
1,561 books | 35 friends

Geevee
4,050 books | 191 friends

Jill H.
2,773 books | 843 friends

More friends…
The Last Lion by William ManchesterThe Last Lion by William ManchesterTruman by David McCulloughMornings on Horseback by David McCullough
Best Biographies
1,661 books — 2,943 voters
Truman by David McCullough
U.S. History Reading List
445 books — 143 voters

More…

Favorite Genres



Polls voted on by CoachJim

Lists liked by CoachJim