Category: words

“The bright blue bookmobile, which hit the road this week, is a roving offshoot of Parnassus Books, a popular independent bookstore. It will roam around town, stopping at food truck rallies, farmers’ markets and outside restaurants.”

“From the moment Jane Eyre was published in 1847 they have exerted an almost hypnotic pull: where other literary sensations flash bright, then fade to earth, the Brontës endure, their stories adapted again and again for both stage and screen.”

“When she pitched under the name Galbraith without revealing her true identity, she faced many more snubs. Since then, Galbraith has published three successful novels but the first was rejected by several publishers, and Rowling was even advised to take a writing course.”

“Language, like everything else that matters to human beings, cannot be understood as a kind of semantic Lego, where we acquire individual words with firm, clear shapes and string them together to form sentences, paragraphs, essays and books. Language is shaped by the culture that has produced it, which means that it, in turn, shapes those who go on to use it.”

“With almost enough copies of Fifty Shades of Grey to build its own sex dungeon, a branch of Oxfam in Swansea has asked people to stop donating the erotic novel or any of its sequels.”

Terry Teachout: “When you consider how completely the pundit class failed to get the primaries right, I’d be more inclined to seek political wisdom in the pages of a novel written by a poet-professor who looked 70 years into the future and foretold the coming of a populist demagogue who spoke the language of the plain people.”

What we see as the clear-cut dichotomy between “the writing of imagination and the writing of fact” doesn’t exist in many languages, and in others the equivalent distinction is drawn along somewhat different lines.

“A group of young people in Krasnodar, southern Russia, burned several books written by American author Henry Miller and filmed the whole ‘ritual’ on camera. The group slammed Miller for promoting an ‘amoral’ western way of life.” (includes video)

“Start by treating The Divine Comedy not as a book, with a coherent, beginning, middle, and end, but rather … treat the poem as Dante the character treated his journey, something to be undertaken step by step.”