more things I was thinking about today
Apr. 4th, 2008 12:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maribouI have a job where it is not only always permitted, but frequently necessary, to handle very old books. There is a particular glory to thirty minutes spent with one's hands on 50 to 200 year old leather spines.
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If you want to make me think your book is worth my attention, using the phrase "a natural history of" in the title or subtitle is remarkably effective.
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That whole theoretical I'd-give-up-the-skills-I-have-if-I-could-have-yours thing?
a) The only other writer I can immediately think of in that category, out of the hundreds I've enthused over, is Ursula LeGuin. It's not a trade I'd make lightly.
b) I do realize it doesn't really work that way. I don't think a person could possibly write the sort of thing that matters deeply to me without a concatenation of non-writerly gifts informing their lives.
****
If you want to make me think your book is worth my attention, using the phrase "a natural history of" in the title or subtitle is remarkably effective.
***
That whole theoretical I'd-give-up-the-skills-I-have-if-I-could-have-yours thing?
a) The only other writer I can immediately think of in that category, out of the hundreds I've enthused over, is Ursula LeGuin. It's not a trade I'd make lightly.
b) I do realize it doesn't really work that way. I don't think a person could possibly write the sort of thing that matters deeply to me without a concatenation of non-writerly gifts informing their lives.
