Blog

“Peter Meltzer decided the modern thesaurus was so flawed, there was only one way to fix it: He would have to write a new one. Next month, some 10 years and 12,000 entries later, The Thinker’s Thesaurus: Sophisticated Alternatives to Common Words (Marion Street Press), will land on bookstore shelves. Instead of following each entry with five or six more-or-less accurate synonyms, The Thinker’s Thesaurus offers but one choice – an exact, albeit unusual, synonym.”

The most eagerly awaited book in France this year is by Michel Houellebecq, the enfant terrible of modern French writing. But the book has had an early entry into public by a critic who claims he found a copy of the book on a park bench. “M. Rinaldi’s account of how he came by the book was, therefore, treated with some scepticism. The headline above his review read ‘A Houellebecq fallen from a lorry’. M. Rinaldi, one of the best-known and most acerbic literary critics in France and an outspoken enemy of Houellebecq’s writing, claimed he had found the review copy by pure accident.”

Why was everyone so apalled with Posh Spice confessed she’d never read a book? “Since when did a regular quota of suitably serious reading matter become obligatory? And who decides what’s worthy anyway? If Victoria Beckham swallowed a regular dose of sugary chick lit or violent slasher chillers, for example (well, they’re books too), would it somehow make her reading habits more acceptable than the fact that she happens to “love fashion magazines”?”