This is the age of the slogan, the soundbite, the snappy phrase in place of considered argument. Thought is dying; reason’s gone critical. In bookshops and magazine racks we’re told only what we want to hear: we’re told it in neat, bullet-pointed affirmations of our own worth.

No more. This is the fightback. The resuscitation. This is the slogan as explainer of the world. One a day for a year. Three hundred and sixty five phrases, soundbites and bullet points with which to make sense of the way things are now and point to how things could be tomorrow. Read them and weep.


Monday

10. There’s more to life than books, you know. (But not much more.)

There is a world outside libraries, beyond the bookshelves. The problem is it’s a messy world full of misery and nastiness and brutality, where things don’t come right and people aren’t interested and anything you do, for the most part, turns out to be utterly inconsequential. It is too tempting to retreat into the warm embrace of literature, to envelop ourselves in its womb of learning and sensitivity, to wallow in its emotional swell. Books teach us about love and about death – and make no mistake, all literature, all prose, all poetry, is an attempt to define love and understand death. Books teach us what it is to be human: from the extremes to the minutiae. They teach it beautifully, passionately, carefully, extravagantly. A life without books is all but worthless. And yet... it is still life. And it is still better to grit your teeth and plunge into it every once in a while. Books can teach us everything about life, about living, but the experience itself: and without the experience it all just remains theory.
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