Catching Up On Articles Saved

I’ve been saving articles using read-later services for years. Since I first learned about Instapaper, sometime in roughly, 2013, I suppose; to when I switched to Pocket following Instapaper’s sale; to now.

With all this time off from work, one of my goals is to thin out my collection of still-unread articles. Here are a couple things that stood out so far, some literal highlights:

• From this article about Breasts and Eggs, the new novel by Mieko Kawakami:

“All the books and blogs [about infertility] catered to couples. What about the rest of us, who were alone and planned to stay that way? Who has the right to have a child? Does not having a partner or not wanting to have sex nullify this right?”

…

“spring [sic] came and went, like someone opening the door to an empty room only to slam it shut again.”

…

“The real thing, the real Osaka dialect, isn’t even about communicating,” she says. “It’s a contest. Somehow, you’re both in the audience and on the stage. … Language is always art, but in order to achieve its highest form, the language itself — intonation, grammar, speed, everything — had to mutate over time.”

I like this one a lot, but it seems to look at language evolution in the same way people mistakenly look at biological evolution: like it’s going somewhere, seeking a higher plane, becoming more perfect. All it’s really doing is adapting with changed needs.

I’m adding this book to my “Books to Read” list.

終