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Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
In “Never Do That to a Book,” a well-worn volume can be evidence of either affection or bad manners. Fadiman considers the difference between readers who keep their books pristine and readers who leave a record of their attention in the margins. Start here if you've ever hesitated before writing in a book.
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Having and Being Had (2020)
10.0/10on Open Library
Published
In “Comforter,” a bulky bedcover needs a washing machine bigger than the one Biss owns. Moving to a wealthier neighborhood has made a large laundromat washer harder to find. It's a small reversal that gives her inquiry into what ownership buys, and what it costs, a concrete place to begin.
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The Chairs Are Where the People Go: How to Live, Work, and Play in the City
In the title piece, Glouberman thinks about how arranging chairs changes the kind of performance an audience can have. Close seating in the dark works for a play. An interactive show needs people to see each other. Heti’s collaboration gives the short talks the directness of someone explaining what he has learned from setting up rooms.
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Silk parachute (2010)
8.0/10on Open Library
Published
The ball in “Silk Parachute” opens in midair as a piece of string unwinds, letting a tiny parachute float back down. McPhee's mother buys him the toy after standing in the cold while he watches planes at LaGuardia. His account of the ball's hinge and string lets the small gift carry the weight of that afternoon.
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Flight Maps: Adventures With Nature in Modern America
“A Brief Natural History of the Plastic Pink Flamingo” follows a lawn ornament from a Massachusetts plastics factory into an American argument about taste. Price keeps real flamingos, Florida leisure, and suburban lawns in view. Try it if you want to see how a cheap decoration can carry several different ideas about nature.
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Species Of Spaces And Other Pieces (1999)
Published
In the section called “The Bed,” part of “Species of Spaces,” Perec shrinks geography to the place occupied by a body. A familiar bed has a location you can feel even before you've found the light. Read the section alongside “The Bedroom” to see how those few feet can help someone remember a whole room.
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Tremendous Trifles
In “A Piece of Chalk,” Chesterton takes colored chalks and brown paper out onto the English downs, then realizes he's left the white chalk behind. The ground he's sitting on supplies the missing color. The joke also sets up an argument about how much white can add to a drawing.
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Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
In “Lenses,” a child's microscope and an adult's binoculars put two kinds of looking side by side. A drop of pond water fills one field of view. Swans above a pond fill the other. The change in scale lets Dillard ask what it feels like to notice movement you'd otherwise have missed.
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On Looking: Essays
In “Glaciology,” a thaw exposes paper cups, socks, and toy trucks in old snow. Purpura follows that familiar mess toward a question about what a glacier leaves behind. The essay makes it hard to pass the last dirty snowbank without looking at what's coming into view.
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Mythologies (1953)
8.5/10on Open Library
Published
“Plastic” starts at an exhibition where people line up to watch a machine turn a heap of tiny crystals into glossy household objects. Barthes pays attention to the way the transformation is staged for the crowd. The essay catches a moment when the manufacture of something ordinary could be sold as a spectacle.
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Orwell: Essays
In “A Nice Cup of Tea,” Orwell has opinions about how deep a cup should be and at what point to pour the milk. The particulars are more revealing when you remember he's writing under rationing. It reads like a friendly argument with someone who has thought through every step of a familiar ritual.
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Evocative Objects: Things We Think With
Tod Machover's “My Cello” follows the familiar wooden instrument into a career spent experimenting with electronic sound. He keeps returning to what it feels like to hold and play. The anthology is a good choice if you like hearing very different writers explain the object they think through best.
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Quotidiana: Essays
Madden gives selling garlic its own essay. “Garlic” is the place to start if you want to see how his mind moves from an unremarkable thing people buy to associations he couldn't have planned at the outset. The collection applies that same curiosity to fruit, teeth, and other close-at-hand material.
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