This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life | 
pickThe author is likely to go down as one of the modern era's great authors. He was a sarcastic, intelligent, elitist who knew it. He was also mentally ill, and unfortunately took his life. This book is the only graduation speech he gave, and the perspective he wishes you to take the world on with is likely the same one he struggled to follow. Short, poignant, and full of sharply written lines, its one of the best speeches you could read.
panRead for a book club.
Did not like it. At all.
This book is a huge waste of paper.
And it‘s a huge cliche we all already know.
Also the author is a bit of a abusive asshole.
Look up him and Mary Karr.
Hard pass.
#thisiswater #davidforestwallace #awful #bookclub #library #librarybookclub #cliche #boring #marykarr #wasteoftime #authorisanasshole
pickThis is a lovely book. Mr Wallace‘s only commencement speech. I‘ve read passages aloud to people who could benefit from his wise words.
pick“‘Learning how to think‘ really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.”
This is a quick little book of excerpts from the only commencement address #DFW ever gave. Worth a read!
PS. One of my 2018 goals is to read more DFW.
pickJust read this book while relaxing at B&N. My first DFW. Even though I read it in the store it will be coming home with me because I need to keep it close. Do yourself a favor and pick this one up.
Twelve years ago today David Foster Wallace delivered one of the best commencement speeches of all time. You can read it here: https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf or listen to it here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI. It provides some really great insight into his mind and what he's all about.
Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.
It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.
Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.
pickThis is probably the thing I've read the most times? It's chicken soup for the critically thinking soul. First time reading it in its hard back edition. I'm bout to turn this wine into water. ❤️
Highlighter is the reader's best friend. 😉📖
There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship...If you worship money and things, ...then you will never have enough...Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly...Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid...Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
A delightful, wise, and wonderful SHORT essay by DFW. And the cover that immediately popped into my head for #augustphotochallenge #minimalisticcovers #day6 #augustofpages
pick"Borrowed" my graduating son's beer, and graduation gift. Not a great dad, but no regrets. Great read and so much lighter than my unopened Infinite Jest.
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.
