The English language is a very fluid beast, it owes a great debt to a great many sources. Amongst those sources is one William Shakespeare, I hear your jeers, scmulzy, wordy William?.
In his brief but prolific life – 26 April 1564 (baptised) – 23 April 1616 - Shakespeare, in a nudge over half a century, invented more than 1500 words.
That number gets a little murky once you add in that he often created new words by changing nouns into verbs, verbs to adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, as well as inventing wholly original, never before heard words.
Clever huh? what’s more amusing is that this 15th century scribe penned phrases that we still use today, often believing them to be most modern. Knock knock! Who’s there? Macbeth :: Read the full article »»»»
George Whitman, the founder of the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris – an iconic English-language literary hub and writers’ refuge in the heart of the French capital – has died at the age of 98.
“George Whitman died peacefully at home in the apartment above his bookstore,” the store said in a statement.
“George suffered a stroke two months ago, but showed incredible strength and determination up to the end, continuing to read every day in the company of his daughter, Sylvia, his friends and his cat and dog,” it said.
Across the Seine from the Notre Dame Cathedral in the famously literary Latin Quarter, Shakespeare and Company has been known to generations in Paris as a haunt of aspiring writers.
Visiting authors and students would work in the shop, sleep in the stacks, and soak up Paris’s literary atmosphere.
Mr Whitman founded the shop as Le Mistral in 1951, later renaming it after the previous Shakespeare and Company owned by Sylvia Beach, which in the 1920s was a gathering place for writers including Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. Read the full article »»»»
Childrens books, hmmm . . . The problem with this genre is the audience, without which it would be an admirable, even honorable calling. So lets imagine they don’t exist, lets imagine writing a childrens book that only the most lowbrow or hippest parents would ever read to a child. And hey presto, it’s been done already. Go the F**k to Sleep. written by Author: Adam Mansbach with illustrations by Ricardo Cortes, Go the F**k to Sleep is an <R> 18+ childrens book. Mansbach is an American author and professor of fiction at Rutgers University. His previous scribblings include Angry Black White Boy and The End of the Jews - for which he won the California Book Award for fiction in 2008.
If you’ve read any of my rants, you’ll know that I despise children, they’re a necessary evil, a little like salmonella. Unfortunately they exist and any opportunity to take the upper-hand is grabbed with glee. Mansbach has created a wonderfilled thing in Go the F**k to Sleep, he’s allowed the childless among us to grin at the antics of breeders, for this I thank him. Oh the book. buy it, read, stick it on a coffee table. There’s also an outstanding Audio Book, read by a man who’s voice was made to cuss, Samuel L. Jackson, snippet below.
The Audible.com spoken word rendition of Go the F**k to Sleep is well worth the piddly $1.99. Go the F**k to Sleep hasn’t endeared me to children, or parents, it has placed a rather large grin on my face though.
Go The F**k to Sleep is available at Amazon:> www.amazon.com
ISBN: 9781921758843 Format: Hardcover
Published: 11th July 2011
Age Range: 18 + Years Old
I would normally churn through a book in a day, not skimming but reading. Mazower’s Dark Continent took 3 days and I’m now on my 3rd round, simply, I LOVE THIS BOOK. The premise is one that I’ve always found arduous to put into words: Our now perspective of history has little to do with the events that took place, the events that created what we now call history . . .
“Mark Mazower’s Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century. Be warned, this book has the ability to become an obsession”
Mazower describes his book as: Dark Continent provides an alternative history of the twentieth century, one in which the triumph of democracy was anything but a forgone conclusion and fascism and communism provided rival political solutions that battled and sometimes triumphed in an effort to determine the course the continent would take. Mark Mazower strips away myths that have comforted us since World War II, revealing Europe as an entity constantly engaged in a bloody project of self-invention. Here is a history not of inevitable victories and forward marches, but of narrow squeaks and unexpected twists, where townships boast a bronze of Mussolini on horseback one moment, only to melt it down and recast it as a pair of noble partisans the next. Unflinching, intelligent, Dark Continent provides a provocative vision of Europe’s past, present, and future. Read the full article »»»»
Like most, I never – well rarely – listen to my mother, she knows everything a little too often. When she handed me The Help, Kathryn Stockett’s first scribblings, I have to admit a dubious frown fell over my face. Fiction, eew, it’s such a dodgy read! One chapter in and I was captured, darn that mother of mine! :: Read the full article »»»»
As we get older – yes you too – stuff that we love tends to fall by the wayside – no biggy – it’s just the way life is. The stuff we do manage to hang on to tends to become treasure. Around here one of those hung-onto treasures has been Danger Girl! The comic is only 14 years old but boy it feels like we’ve loved the girls forever! Crawl out from under that rock if your clueless to the adventures of the most well drawn girls ever – sorry Suicide Girls, Abbey was here first – to be penciled onto a piece of drafting paper :: Read the full article »»»»
The English language is a very fluid beast, it owes a great debt to a great many sources. Amongst those sources is one William Shakespeare, I hear your jeers, scmulzy, wordy William?.
