The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “books”

A Guide for the Perplexed: Mapping the Meaning of Life and the Four Levels of Being
A Guide for the Perplexed: Mapping the Meaning of Life and the Four Levels of Being

How to harness the uniquely human power of “consciousness recoiling upon itself.”

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A Field Guide to Getting Lost: Rebecca Solnit on How We Find Ourselves
A Field Guide to Getting Lost: Rebecca Solnit on How We Find Ourselves

“The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation… Never to get lost is not to live.”

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The Best-Kept Secret of Clichés: How to Upgrade Our Uses and Abolish Our Abuses of Language
The Best-Kept Secret of Clichés: How to Upgrade Our Uses and Abolish Our Abuses of Language

A manifesto against mindless language, or how to get off autopilot in the art of communication.

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C.S. Lewis on Suffering and What It Means to Have Free Will in a Universe of Fixed Laws
C.S. Lewis on Suffering and What It Means to Have Free Will in a Universe of Fixed Laws

“Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.”

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Astronomer Jill Tarter on the Ongoing Search for Extraterrestrial Life and How She Inspired Carl Sagan’s Novel-Turned-Film <em>Contact</em>
Astronomer Jill Tarter on the Ongoing Search for Extraterrestrial Life and How She Inspired Carl Sagan’s Novel-Turned-Film Contact

The importance of playing the long game in life, be it extraterrestrial or earthly.

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How Susan Sontag Possessed New York and Subverted Sexual Stereotypes
How Susan Sontag Possessed New York and Subverted Sexual Stereotypes

“Sontag seemed to exude an irresistible mixture of intelligence, hipness, sex, and beauty.”

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Henry Miller on Money and How the Hedonic Treadmill of Material Rewards Entraps Us
Henry Miller on Money and How the Hedonic Treadmill of Material Rewards Entraps Us

“The dilemma in which we find ourselves today is that no matter how much we increase the purchasing power of the wage-earner he never has enough.”

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Migrant: An Alice in Wonderland for the Modern Immigrant Experience
Migrant: An Alice in Wonderland for the Modern Immigrant Experience

A compassionate chronicle of the laboring nomad’s optimism and wistfulness.

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The Poetics of Reverie: Philosopher Gaston Bachelard on Love, Solitude, and Happiness
The Poetics of Reverie: Philosopher Gaston Bachelard on Love, Solitude, and Happiness

“Love is the contact of two poetries, the fusion of two reveries.”

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Debriefing: Susan Sontag Reads from <em>I, Etcetera</em>
Debriefing: Susan Sontag Reads from I, Etcetera

“With more people, there are more voices to tune out.”

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