Hello! This is the second edition of weekly Sunday reads. You can check the first edition here. If you like what you read, please drag this email to inbox from Promotions.
Lately I have been fascinated by the idea of sense of belonging being shaped by the internet and abundance of news. There are just too many problems in the world to pick and choose to fight for. Being in a room communicating with the world only through the internet, I might as well care about Blue Iguana’s as to why Green Iguanas should be eaten to save Blue Iguanas on a Carribean island. Talking of blue, another example is how we are ( edit : were ) eagerly awaiting Blue swinging over Red in the United States.
Everybody just wants to belong somewhere because it is such a ‘bummer to be a human being’ (Kurt Vonnegut, A Man without a Country), leave alone having to make sense of the world alone. I’ll expound on this idea in a later post.
1. In the back of a Dream Car - a blog post on Bowie’s use of dreams in his songs
“Welcome to the world of your dreams, where you can be what you want, commit horrible sins and get away with it. No more false illusion, goodbye to confusion. You step from the shadows, you hear the command. An image to dream. You tremble permission."
2. Eight Marvelous & Melancholy Things I've Learned About Creativity.
A good storyteller is also a good story-collector. Oatmeal comics surprises in different ways through its sense of humor & sincerity but this 8 part comics is my favourite so far.
3. How Amazon ruined the publication of a secret JD Salinger novel in 1995
A fan grew up to become a publisher who wanted to get Salinger’s presumably last story in 1995 ( available online as a New Yorker post now). In Salinger’s last public interview he says “There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It’s peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.” What happens to the book in a twist and turn of events back in 1995 when Amazon was book selling website is an interesting plot in itself.
4. Mark Twain’s Return for Governor
A 5 page story which is not so commonly read in American textbooks but was taught in Mainland China in 20th century. Apparently, Twain’s satirical fiction on exposing false democracy in a capitalist world (soon after People’s Republic of China was established) was prescribed to the Chinese students as an essential reading for nearly 50 years!
That’s it for today. If you know someone who might enjoy reading this newletter, feel free to forward.
Oh and illustration of the week on how poorly automated systems affect those who act as nodes between two disparate systems.