BookNeedles

This is a place to explore the unique construction of words and ideas hidden in books that make me immediately underline/highlight and which are beyond the quotable notables and also a few quotable notables now and then. They are the hidden details, the needles in the haystack. The why is to share these cool and often overlooked parts of books, the fringes or fluff beyond what would normally be found in the typical thesaurus of quotations. It is also to explore these puzzled together words not necessarily tied to context or literary critic, but rather a free flow of ideas that turn the gears of the mind.

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Book Needles refers to the idiom of “looking for a needle in a haystack,” meaning that the intriguing passages found in books (the proverbial needles) are hard to find among the voluminous words and pages (the haystack). This phrase originated in the works of St. Thomas More in 1532 (”To seek out one line in his bookes would be to go look [for] a needle in a meadow.”). However, I like the use by Miguel De Cervantes in Don Quixote better: “What’s more, looking for Dulcinea up and down El Toboso will be like looking for little Maria in Ravenna, or the Bachelor in Salamanca.” Cervantes, S. M., & Cohen, J. M. (1950). The adventures of Don Quixote. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, p. 526.

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Reference: Wright, Jason. “A Needle In A Haystack.” AstroWright, 7 June 2018, sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2018/06/07/a-needle-in-a-haystack/.