Friday Things: 12/12/2014

Here’s something new. In my efforts at blog-subject expansion, I’m going to attempt a weekly feature called Friday Things. I could be alliterative and call it the Friday Five, but I have more than five things to show you, and I’m sure I’ll have more or fewer in the future.

All of these Things didn’t appear this week. I just found them this week, and I figure that some people I know might enjoy them, too. Here’s what I found on my adventures around The Internet, in bullet form:

Buzzfeed made a list of 51 of the most beautiful quotes. None of them came from Cormac McCarthy, so they’re obviously wrong, but they still get a B for effort.
A fine article from Tim Parks of The New York Review of Books about marginalia as “a weapon for readers.” An excerpt:

But if writers are to entice us into their vision, let us make them work for it. Let us resist enchantment for a while, or at least for long enough to have some idea of what we are being drawn into. For the mindless, passive acceptance of other people’s representations of the world can only enchain us and hamper our personal growth, hamper the possibility of positive action. Some¬times it seems the whole of society languishes in the stupor of the fictions it has swallowed. Wasn’t this what Cervantes was complaining about when he began Don Quixote? Better to read a poor book with alert resistance, than devour a good one in mindless adoration.
The Atlantic‘s “The Best Book I Read this Year” list includes an interesting take on The Bone Clocks.
An article in The New Yorker about the evolution of hoarding.
Why the Elf on the Shelf is the greatest fraud ever pulled on children (and why I want one).
Possibly my favorite: Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore) on Minecraft.
This amazing photo by Ellen Jantzen:
And, finally, here’s a video of Neil Gaiman reciting “Jabberwocky.”