So I didn't expect to come upon a new kind of place, that is, a place that demanded unknown rules of behavior, not twenty miles from my house, and certainly not in a shopping mall. This encounter happened in the 1970s. - regarding food courts The title of this collection [A Sense of Place, A Sense …
Continue reading Mysteries of the Mall and Other Essays – Witold Rybczynski – Quotes
I bought this book back in 2018 during my crazy bookshop crawl. Looking at the list now, I'm pretty much done reading half of the books I bought then. Definitely not running out of reading matter anytime soon! Witold Rybczynski is an architect and a professor, but he is mostly known for his writings on …
Continue reading Mysteries of the Mall and other Essays – Witold Rybczynski
Given that it is in the 20 Books of Summer 2019, I read it probably seven or eight months ago. I got a Polish edition from my mum, read it quickly and continued with the challenge, never stopping to this about the book again. Which is not very nice. So as our beloved virus grants …
Continue reading The Soul of Man Under Socialism – Oscar Wilde
I know, given the situation the climate crisis fell off the agenda again. But since I read it, why not think about not only the current virus crisis but also the imminent climate one. Actually, it seems one may prove that we can do something about the other. You can see here, how pollution levels …
Continue reading No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference – Greta Thunberg
Week three, how are you all doing? After last week’s dystopian and depressing list, I thought you may be in the mood for something more uplifting. So this week we’ll look at the wise and calming books. Those that transport you, help put things in perspective or focus your mind on other things. A Gentleman …
I got the Polish version of this book as a gift from my mother. It is beautifully published with a cover showing 20 cats sitting on the word 'cat' in each of the twenty languages. At just over 400 pages it is not exactly a short read, but the way Dorren writes about languages makes …
Continue reading Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages – Gaston Dorren
The original English title of this book is Never Use Futura. I got the Polish version from my mum as a gift. In a book about a typeface, you would assume the physical side will be important and it is. The Polish edition faithfully following the standards set by Princeton Architectural Press. Each font used …
Continue reading Never Use Futura/Wystrzegaj się Futury – Douglas Thomas
It maintains that this insecurity is the result of trying to be secure, and that, contrariwise, salvation and sanity consist in the most radical recognition that we have no way of saving ourselves. There is, then, the feeling that we live in a time of unusual insecurity. In the past hundred years so many long-established …
Continue reading Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety – Alan W. Watts – Quotes
The principal thing is to understand that there is no safety or security. I bought this book last April when I was in New York for work. It was a really unstable time and even though I would normally steer clear of this type of book (or any books I perceive as self-help ones) I …
Continue reading Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety – Alan W. Watts
it was easy to agree with the German poet Heinrich Heine, who allegedly said that if a war ever broke out he would head straight for the Netherlands, because 'everything happens fifty years later there'. Initially, I had been under the vague impression that it was one of those eco-friendly countries where environmental protection was …
Continue reading Why the Dutch are Different – Ben Coates – Quotes
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