(Roughly) Daily

Kanya Kanchana‘s panegyric to lists in literature, to the literature of lists, and to the authors who make them…

… We all make lists, if only to buy bread and milk. But we tend to forget how mythic and subversive (as we have just seen), joyful and maddening, enchanting and sobering, and utterly chilling lists can be—and what they can do. To love a list is to partake in letter and word, form and change. To make lists is to join a long line of list makers, to indulge in a timeless art, to break down the artificial wall that separates thinking and doing, thinkers and doers… 

From Borges and the Bhagavad-Gītā to Georges Perec and Atul Gawande: “One Thing After Another: A Reading List for Lovers & Makers of Lists,” from @Longreads.

* Umberto Eco (one of the authors on the list)

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As we check it off, we might note that today is National I Am In Control Day… an annual celebration of two disparate things: it is meant to encourage people to take control of their lives. At the same time, it marks the occasion of an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan (on this date in 1981) immediately after which then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig, in a press briefing, uttered the famous words, “I am in control“… which wasn’t factually correct and contributed to his resignation not too long after.