In case you thought that Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was about bookburning and censorship (you know, since it has all the bookburning and censorship in it), you’d apparently be wrong. He says that it was about TV. It was about his hatred of large-screen TVs, factiods over the news instead of real news, shallow TV knowledge […]
Archive | Language/Lit
English is Broken
English isn’t perfect. For me, it wasn’t until I started learning other languages that I realized some deficiencies in my own. Just for fun, here are a few: WE: Let’s say that you, dear reader, and I, are chatting. I say to you “we’re invited to the party.” Off the bat, you don’t know whether […]
I Don't Feel So Good
Don’t worry your pretty little heads. I feel fine. I really don’t like the way that people use “so” to mean, “very” in a negative statement. “This veal isn’t so good.” It just sounds wrong to me, and snob that I am, it sounds low-class. To me, “so” is properly used when there’s something to […]
I'm Ishmael
Apparently, there’s a bit of an uproar over Orion Books’s decision to print abridged versions of classics. (Link) So, they’re taking out something around 40% of a book like Moby Dick, then calling it a Compact Edition. I guess I don’t really care. My first reaction was that it’s a terrible thing to do. These […]
Value
I wonder why it is that reading literature as a hobby is considered somehow better than watching basketball. I mean for an adult. I totally get why kids should be reading literature. But for adults. If a person doesn’t enjoy reading Dickens, then what’s the point? To learn about Victorian England? Where is that going […]
It's Funny Because It's (not) True
Alex Heard, in The New Republic, reports how David Sedaris makes up some of the stories that he presents as nonfiction. (Link) I like David Sedaris, but I have wondered whether some of his material is too good to be true. And I do think that being true is a big part of why his […]
Tragedy + Time = Comedy
I recently read Tobias Wolff’s autobiographical “This Boy’s Life,” about his time as a young delinquent. Since I’ve also read his, “In Pharaoh’s Army,” an autobiographical account of his time in Vietnam, I feel as though I’ve pretty well covered the guy’s life up until he became a writer. Near the end of “This Boy’s […]
Trivia Rip-Off
I played trivia at a bar a few weeks ago. One of the questions that my team missed was, “what’s the word with the longest entry in the Oxford English Dictionary?” Now, as it happens, I OWN some of the Oxford English Dictionary. Specifically, I own the letters A-O. I own all those letters. But […]
The Law. Plus Bonus Trivia!
When you’re shopping for a couch, especially online, you may notice that certain sellers outside your state will sell you the couch without charging sales tax. You may think to yourself that this is a pretty good deal (especially if the shipping is free). But note that the law in your state probably says that […]
Save the Semicolon!
So I get a text message from JB at Hogswallowing (link on right of main weeklyrob page). The gist of the message is that Kurt Vonnegut doesn’t like semicolons. Vonnegut’s latest book, “A Man Without a Country,” is apparently a collection of his articles over the last few years. The man can write (and he […]