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"To look back on a year of reading is to be handed a clear mirror of your priorities and passions, of the questions that live in you and the reckonings that keep you up at night. While the literature of the present comprises only a tiny fraction of my own reading, here are a handful of books published this year that moved me with their tendrils of timelessness, with their questions and their consolations — selections neither exhaustive nor universal, as subjective as a shade of blue". Read more at the Marginalian

Ray Kroc  (1902 -1984), spent most of the first decades of his professional career selling paper cups and milkshake machines. In that process he came across a popular California hamburger restaurant owned by Dick and Mac McDonald, Curious as to why a small restaurant needed 40 Milkshake machines, he looked into it and was impressed by his process, simplicity and cleanliness. He went into business with the brothers and launched the McDonald's franchise in 1955. He went on to purchase the company in 1961 and to transform McDonald's into the world’s largest restaurant franchise. By the time of his death in 1984, the chain had 7,500 outlets across the world with gross sales of $8 billion.

May Sarton was the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton (1912 – 1995), She was a prolific Belgian-American novelist and poet, with over 50 books published, including novels, poetry, nonfiction works, children's books, a play, and screenplays. Sarton taught at several colleges and universities, including Wellesley College and Harvard University. Her tombstone has a quote of her's : "I think my work is universal, and I think my value is as a maker of bridges ..."

Karl Ove Knausgaard, Norwegian writer, born in Oslo, Norway in 1968. His first book, a 1998 novel tilted , Ute av verden (“Out of the World”), became the first debut novel to win the Norwegian Critics’ Prize. Knausgaard’s second book, titled A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven, (also published as A Time for Everything). His six volume series, autobiographical novel, Min kamp (My Strugle), published starting in 2009 became a best seller in Norway and its English-language publication gathered a large following.

Source:  Karl Ove Knausgaard, Min kamp 1

Baltasar Gracián, S. J. (1601 - 1658), in full, Baltasar Gracián Morales, was a Spanish Jesuit, prose writer and philosopher. He is known as  one of the leading exponents of conceptism, a literary movement of the Spanish Golden Age of literature characterized by a rapid rhythm, directness, simple vocabulary, witty metaphors, and wordplay. In this style, multiple meanings are conveyed in a very concise manner, and conceptual intricacies are emphasized over elaborate vocabulary. His writings were lauded by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and the appeal of his timeless advice focusing on honesty and kindness endures to this date.

"A human being is a living constellation of contradictions, mostly opaque to itself. “Inward secret creatures,” Iris Murdoch called us in reckoning with the blind spots of our self-knowledge"... More at The Marginalian ➜

Baltasar Gracián, S. J. (1601 - 1658), in full, Baltasar Gracián Morales, was a Spanish Jesuit, prose writer and philosopher. He is known as  one of the leading exponents of conceptism, a literary movement of the Spanish Golden Age of literature characterized by a rapid rhythm, directness, simple vocabulary, witty metaphors, and wordplay. In this style, multiple meanings are conveyed in a very concise manner, and conceptual intricacies are emphasized over elaborate vocabulary. His writings were lauded by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and the appeal of his timeless advice focusing on honesty and kindness endures to this date.

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