This isn’t my normal blogging fare, but I’m annoyed and who else should share in my annoyance but you, a random reader? Here’s a little conversation I had with a seller on Amazon.com. This guy had listed his book as being “Like New.†It seemed cheap, and the book was fairly old, so I asked […]
Archive | Language/Lit
Law
I love reading smart non-fiction writers. I love finding a flaw, or an unexplained item, then having the writer point it out and polish it away. The writer says, “you may be thinking, ‘if X then Y.’ But that’s not true because A and B.†And I say, “yeah! I was thinking that!†I can […]
What’s in a Name?
What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet. So I got my Shakespeare, as mentioned in an earlier post. I […]
Cheap Shakespeare
I’m not a true Shakespeare guy. I like a lot of individual bits and pieces within his plays, and I love how bawdy he gets at times. He can be really funny, and he sometimes says beautiful things. But I haven’t read all his stuff, and I have no interest in doing so. It’s an […]
E-Books
It doesn’t look as though it’ll revolutionize anything, but Sony is at least giving at a go (link). The last thing I want is a crappy screen with crappy font that’s hard to read. If you go to the “Easy Reading†section, then hover over “Revolutionary Display,†you find that the text looks pretty nice. […]
Roughing It
I’m reading Mark Twain’s Roughing It (link), a disjointed account of his time spent getting to, and living in, the Territory of Nevada. At least, I guess that’s what it’s about. I’m only about a third of the way through the thing and it’s hard to know. Though it was written as a sort of […]
Fuck
[Too busy to think, so I’m posting yet another old thought of mine from YOY.] Should certain words, devoid of sexual meaning, be banned from TV or radio? Take the word, “fuck,†for instance. When used to mean, “have sex,†it can be argued that it’s obscene. But when you use it like, “that was […]
Read Slower
I’m reading Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow. I won’t go into how Ragtime is different from other novels in its delivery or subject-matter, and I won’t detail the sudden and unexpected raunchy moments. But while reading a couple of pages today, I twice stopped to appreciate the writing. 1. Harry Houdini (yes, the escape artist) is […]
Head Scratcher
Ironic is pronounced: eye + ron + ick. Irony is pronounced: eye + run + ee. Iron is pronounced: eye + yern. How did “R-O-N†become “Y-E-R-N� [End of Post]
Translation
I recently finished reading the Odyssey, which I have two versions of. One is translated by S. H. Butcher and A. Lang. The other by Robert Fagles. Here is a representative sample from the former: Therewith he spake to Hermes, his dear son: ‘Hermes, forasmuch as even in all else thou art our herald, tell […]