Being a confirmed logolept, I like to collect words, and this dictionary was a windfall for me because it has plenty of unusual ones. Unlike regular dictionaries, it is not one long alphabetized list, but rather a series of chapters containing glossaries of words relating to a specific subject or theme. Naturally enough, the first chapter is all about “word” words, all of them beginning, naturally enough, with the prefix “logo”.
It goes on from there, covering insomnia words, phobias and manias, “killing” words, types of divination, forms of government, eponyms, portmanteaus and acronyms, long and short words, interesting words no longer in use, consonant only words, word play, love, sex and marriage words, unusual words that don’t fall into any specific category, and three chapters on animal words: animal adjectives, names for baby animals and collective nouns for groups of animals.
It was in this last chapter that I found out that a group of ferrets is known as a “business” and a group of ravens as an “unkindness.” I don’t know when I’m going to be able to put this knowledge to use, but never mind, it’s still fun to know.
Seriously, the book HAS come in handy, especially the chapters on phobias and manias, and it is valuable for Scrabble players when all they have left is consonants…
Speaking of reference books: I recently discovered Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, and am planning to dupe my parents into giving me the updated Millenium Edition for my birthday. This wonderful book is full of fascinating and often completely useless information.
Literary musings: In continuation of yesterday's outburst
There are readers who don't hesitate to mark their place by folding down a corner or laying the book down open and face down, risking serious damage to the pages and spine.
Some like to break the spine before starting to read, which weakens the cover and loosens glued pages. Of course, sometimes you have to, especially when the book is as thick as a brick and fights back when you try to open it.
I have heard of a reader who likes to read paperbacks and tear out each page after he's done and throw it away (shudder).
And don't talk to me about people who smoke while they read: I have checked a book out of the library that turned out to be so poisonous from cigarette fumes that only a gas mask would have enabled me read it.
All of this spells disrespect to me and I don't understand how people can treat books like that.
I also don't understand people who highlight words or write in library books or other books they don't own. I don't generally write in books myself, except sometimes in school books I don't intend to resell, and I would never write in a book that doesn't belong to me, and I always use a pencil when scribbling in my own books. ---------------------
*There's nothing that teaches that lesson more effectively than having your pet bird land in the soup dish and shower both you and the book with soup. After the soup incident he is not allowed out at mealtimes.
Message to people who write in library books and books others have leant to them:
Full title: The Wordsworth Book of Intriguing Words: The insomniac's dictionary of the outrageous, odd and unusual Author:Paul Hellweg Published:1986 (as The Insomniac?s Dictionary) Where got:University Student Bookstore Genre:Dictionary, glossaries Cover image
I'm studying for exams and writing final essays for the next three weeks, so during that time I'm going to review some of the reference books I use in my field of study. To make it more fun, I'm going to pick some of the more unusual reference books in my library.
As a student of translation I am naturally interested in etymology, semantics and semiotics. This book is not only a nice way of finding unusual words, their meanings and origins, but it is also quite short for a dictionary and fun to read.
The Loved One is a dark and often quite subtle satire, even becoming quite morbid at times. It deftly satirises the movie business, the funeral industry, American society and Americans in general. Mind you, Dennis Barlow is no paragon of virtue...
Sometimes the satire becomes quite obvious, like whenever Waugh starts describing Americans in general - his description of the uniformity of American women is sneeringly bitter and quite funny: "Dennis at once forgot everything about her. He had seen her before everywhere. American mothers presumably knew their daughters apart but to the European eye the Mortuary hostess was one with all her sisters of the air-liners and the reception-desks. She was the standard product. A man could leave such a girl in a delicatessen shop in New York, fly three thousand miles and find her again in a cigar stall in San Francisco and she would croon the same words to him in moments of endearment and express the same views and preferences in moments of social discourse.
It's hard to tell if Waugh is being sarcastic here or if he really feels this way about American women. (Yes, I know this is a novel, but there are certain indications in Waugh's life story that in this book he was lashing out at American society in reaction to being frustrated by American film-makers who had optioned his book, Brideshead Revisited for a movie).
Rating:A dark, subtle and funny look at life, death and what comes after. 4 stars.
The other good second hand bookshop in ReykjavÃk is very nearly in the centre of the city, not too far away from where I work. The street it's located in is the next one down from Laugarvegurinn, the main shopping street.
This shop is more like a regular bookshop: it's clean and neat, there is little dust, and there are no free-standing bookcases. The smell of books is still there, but it doesn't have that church-like atmosphere of the other one. The attraction there (for me) is the paperback section. A bunch of shelves and a table piled high with foreign (mostly English) language paperbacks beckons as soon as you enter. The books there are more expensive than in the other shop, costing about the same as they would new in a bookstore in the USA (did I mention that books are VERY expensive in Iceland?). The great thing about this second-hand bookshop is that it accepts trade-ins. The trade-in price for one paperback is two paperbacks - an excellent way to reduce a large library. This is where I acquired most of my fantasy paperbacks, and where I get mystery novels and thrillers for my mother.
Before going in there to trade books, a savvy bibliophile will first visit the Red Cross second-hand shop and buy a couple of books for 200 kr. and trade them in for a single book that costs four times that...
Author: Evelyn Waugh Published: 1948 Where got: second-hand bookshop (the one from the second post down) Genre: Social satire Cover image
I first saw the movie as a child and again recently on TCM. I had no idea it was based on a book until I started reading about the film on IMDb, and when I found the book I immediately bought it in anticipation of a good read.
Here are a couple of links to information about the author and his books:
Finished it last night. The book is well written and set up as a busy week in the life of Gerald Durrell, back in the 1970's when it was originally written. Interspersed with descriptions of Gerry's daily routine, character and moods are comments and reminiscences of himself, his friends and his family. He is shown in different environments and interacting with different kinds of people and what emerges is a portrait of a man who was contradictory in many ways.
Strong willed and selfish, generous, charming, moody and used to having his own way, yet admired and loved by people who knew him, Durrell was no ordinary person. His upbringing was eccentric and his education sporadic and specialized: he basically read a lot of books, studied everything to do with animals and nature, and didn't bother much with the rest. Yet he emerged as a fine writer and an enthusiastic nature lover and conservationist who was capable of sweeping other people along with his writing. After all this, it's hard to believe that he was shy and retiring when it came to meeting the public or standing up to make speeches.
This books only gives snippets of biographical information, mostly concentrating on Durrell's personality. I really think I will have to read his biography now to get the whole picture.
Rating: A biographical appetizer that one might follow up with Durrell's own autobiographical books for the main course, followed by his official biography as a dessert to complete the meal. 3 stars.
I remember being very upset when my favourite second-hand bookshop closed and an Irish theme pub opened in its place. The shop had been housed on two floors, the first being given over to Icelandic books and antiques, and the second floor to foreign books. I could spend hours in there browsing until I was driven out by sneezing fits brought on by the clouds of dust that would billow up when some of the older books were pulled out for inspection.
As it turned out, the store had not closed, but had just moved to a cheaper location, a mere 10 minute walk from the old one, in a residential area where the Salvation Army also has a shop, giving me a double reason for visiting the area.
The new location has by now become too small for its contents. As you enter, you come into a dimly lit room dominated by a couple of desks placed at an angle to one another to form an L-shaped fortress around the bookseller - a friendly, elderly man - when he isn't pottering about the shop and arranging books on shelves. A large table in the middle of the room is stacked high with books, and to the side there is a huge pile of even more books. Continuing inwards from the front of the room are rambling, dusty bookcases that reach towards the ceiling and drifts of books creep over the floor and periodically threaten to form dams across the narrow aisles. The air is hot and dusty and has a musty, papery smell and I can never stay for long because it is always stiflingly hot in there, possibly to ward off dampness. There may well be doorways into other dimensions hidden among the shelves, and I wouldn't be surprised if one day I were to find myself wandering into L-space. It's that kind of bookshop.
I love second-hand bookshops and (by extension) second-hand books.
The number of second-hand bookshops in ReykjavÃk has dropped severely since I was a teenager. Most of the shops I remember from my forays into the city in those years were situated on the fringes of the city centre, away from the main shopping streets, sometimes skulking inside residential areas. The windows were usually dirty enough to allow only a dim view of the inside, and once you opened the door, the shops were tiny and stuffed with books from floor to ceiling, with hoards of more books in boxes, piles and stacks on creaky wooden floors. They all seemed to be run by old men who sat in ancient office chairs (that leaked stuffing) and looked benignly on as you rifled through the collections of dusty books. If you were lucky, you could find treasures for next to nothing, books that don't seem to be available anywhere anymore.
This was before the flea market opened.
The only good thing about buying books at the flea market is the low prices. Unlike the shops, the flea market is large, noisy and crowded, and, like most true bibliophiles, I love bookshops that remind me of an old-fashioned library, complete with high bookshelves and an atmosphere of church-like quietness combined with a smell of paper, dust and leather covers.
After the flea market opened and a bunch of booksellers set up permanent booths there, selling new and used books at low prices, the old-time second-hand shops disappeared one by one, killed off by competition, bad locations and the retirement or passing away of the owners. Now there are only two worthwhile second-hand bookshops left in the city.
Haven't made any progress with my book of the week, but have been reading one of Durrell's books instead. It's one of only a few I haven't read before: The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium. It's a collection of short pieces in the same vein as Fillets of Plaice and the "human animals" section of Encounters with Animals. The stories are all about people and human nature, told with Durrell's usual flair and the hyperbolic style he likes to use when telling humorous stories. I haven't laughed so hard since I read Terry Pratchett?s The Wee Free Men last year. This one is definitely going on my whish list.
Full title: Himself and Other Animals: Portrait of Gerald Durrell Author: David Hughes Published: 1997 Where got: public library Genre: Biography, memoir Cover image
This week's book is about one of my favorite authors: Gerald Durrell. David Hughes, a longtime friend of Durrell's, wrote the book as a tribute to his friend back in the seventies, but it wasn't published until after Durrell's death. It's more a portrait of the man than a regular biography - I guess it should be called a memoir rather than a biography.
What is it with sci-fi and fantasy authors? Can't they write a story that?s contained within one book? Is it greed, is it inability or unwillingness to finish the story, is it a continuation of the tradition of serializing novels in newspapers and magazines, or is it something else altogether? Is Tolkien (or rather his publisher) to blame?
You can probably guess by this that I don't particularly like reading an endless series of books that together make up one huge epic. I like it even less when there is no indication of this to be found on the cover and I buy a book thinking it's a stand-alone story and then discover I've bought volume 12 of a 25 volume epic. Gimme a break!
Trilogies are OK, unless they run to 1500 pages per volume, but more books than that - no way. If they are collected in one volume later on (like the 3 volumes -7 books - of The Lord of the Rings was), I may be tempted to invest in it, but I will not spend my money on a series that goes on and on with no end in sight. It doesn't matter how good it is. What if the author died or the publisher went bankrupt? I would never see the conclusion of the story and it would nag me endlessly.
I came to this resolution after I once started reading a gothic fantasy series that dealt with a large family of witches, starting in the 16th or 17th century and stretching onwards to modern times (I think the last book ended in what was then the future). The books were well written, the historical aspects were detailed and largely correct and there were some interesting sex scenes (hey, I was a teenager, full of hormones and curiosity).
After reading about 10 books I realised three things: 1) that I would have to read every single book in the order of publication to be able to understand goings-on in later books, 2) it would go on for years, and 3) I didn't have the patience.
So I stopped reading them.
As it turned out, I was right on all accounts. The author created a complicated family tree and it was vitally important to know what had happened to who and who was descended from whom; in the end there were more than 40 books of about 150-200 pages each; and when the series came to an end the author began another one about what happened afterwards. According to a friend who read them all, the quality kept on declining the closer the books got to the 20th century. By that time I had long lost interest in this kind of literature and was reading books in which realism reigned supreme (I have since come back to fantasy).
However, I have nothing against books from series that happen in the same fantasy world and even feature the same characters, as long as each book is a separate and complete story and you don't need a "companion" or guide to figure out plot elements or the reasons why major characters are like they are. I used to quite like Piers Anthony's Xanth (before it got silly and repetitious) and I still love Terry Pratchett's Discworld. In both series, having read the other books helps you understand the characters and the worlds better, but a reader unfamiliar with the series can still safely pick up any book in the series and enjoy it on its own.
As I mentioned before, the narrative is in two totally different styles. The first chapter and every second chapter after that is written in the1st person, 18th century style English. The 1st person narrator is Nicholas Dyer, a character very loosely based on real life English architect Nicholas Hawksmoor. In the book, Ackroyd attributes to Dyer the six churches Hawksmoor is most famous for designing, and the narrative is as much based around the churches as it is around Dyer, inspector Hawksmoor and other characters in the book.
The second chapter and every other chapter following is written in the 3rd person, modern English. In part one of the book these chapters introduce, with great compassion, characters who end up being murdered at the sites of Dyer's churches, in an echo of sacrificial deaths, accidental, by murder or by suicide, that are connected with the building of the churches (in the story). In part two the modern chapters tell the story of inspector Hawksmoor who is investigating the murders, and his increasing frustration over getting nowhere with the cases.
I have to say that while this novel is a masterpiece in many ways, it is not a satisfying read. It has an ending, but no conclusion or resolution, leaving the reader to try to work out happened. The use of 1st person narrative for the insane and evil Dyer and the 3rd person for Hawksmoor, who's closest to being the good guy in the story, serves to make the reader feel compassion for Dyer and indifference towards Hawksmoor. Most of all it underlines how alike they are, their thought processes and frustrations are very similar, like two sides of the same coin.
Hawksmoor should really be read with a map of London at hand, as it will give the reader a better feel for the area in which the story happens. Make that TWO maps, one of the contemporary city and one of 18th century London, as some of the street names have changed. Knowing what the churches in the book look like will help as well - here's a link to a page with pictures of some them. Another good reference to have at hand for historical detail is Ackroyd's own London: A Biography, but it's not absolutely necessary.
Rating: A dark and morbid narrative, in turns horrifying and puzzling, that should appeal to admirers of gothic literature and murder mysteries. 3 stars for quality, none for satisfaction.
Author: Lilian Jackson Braun Year published: 1998 Genre: Mystery, whodunnit Where got: Second-hand bookstore Cover image
I read this in three hours last night and enjoyed it. Braun has a way with words and since the [i]Cat Who[/i] books all happen mostly in the same area, the author has been able to make the place and its inhabitants seem very real. The style is sparkling and the story entertaining. The titular cat, Koko, is not in any sense a "supercat" who actively stalks and catches criminals (not in this particular book at least), and the hints and assistance he gives his owner can be seen as mere coincidences or reactions to the owner's moods, which makes it possible for people who don't like cats (or at any rate don't believe them to be over-intelligent), to enjoy the story. Of course a little "suspension of disbelief" makes the story more enjoyable, since it's fun to imagine Koko as a super-intelligent being who likes to solve mysteries, rather than just a bright animal reacting to its environment.
The story is a typical whodunnit. As everyone who's familiar with the genre knows, a good whodunnit doesn't reveal the identity of the criminal until on the last pages. Unfortunately there is a very revealing blurb on the back of the book. A good blurb doesn't give too much away, and this one gave away the most important thing: the identity of the criminals. Not that it matters - the story is transparent enough for an experienced mystery reader to figure it out quickly. The fun was in seeing the narrative twists and turns that lead Koko and Qwilleran to finally solve the mystery.
Author: Peter Ackroyd Published: 1985 Where got: public library Genre: mystery, horror Cover image
I read this book years ago as part of a college course on modern English literature, but I remember nothing about it. Even now, when I'm almost finished with part one, I still remember nothing about the previous reading, which I guess shows how interested I was in it at the time.
Every other chapter happens in the 18th century and is written in the style of that time, which takes a while to get used to. The other chapters are written in modern English and happen in modern times. The narrative point of view shifts between chapters, from 1st person to 3rd person. These stylistic changes necessitate a shifting of mental gears at the beginning of each chapter and make the book challenging to read.
So far I'm finding it to be a dark and rather menacing narrative. Dyer, the 18th century narrator, appears to be stark raving mad and a satanist to boot. His narrative seems to tie in with the modern chapters, where it appears that people are being murdered in the neighbourhood of churches Dyer has built.
Part two should start giving some explanations - I hope. I hate it when mysteries continue to be mysterious after I've finished reading them.
After all the rave reviews and accolades, I expected Cod to be something more than just an ordinary history book. It isn't. Like many other history books I've read, it's well researched, informative and well written, if somewhat journalistic at times, but by far the best thing about it is the quotes and recipes, for which Mr. Kurlansky is not responsible. The writing failed to get me interested in the subject and about the only thing I found interesting was chapter 2 which gives information about the biology and ecology of the cod, and chapter 10, which gave me a new angle on the cod wars between Iceland and Britain, which in retrospect seem funny but at the time were dead serious.
I can only surmise that the praise the book has received was for the idea itself, of writing the history of the commercial exploitation of a seemingly mundane natural food resource, and furthermore one that few people outside the fishing communities of the Atlantic ocean ever give thought to. Of course, it has been done before, but mostly about more exotic foods like chocolate.
Rating: 1 star for an unusual subject, 1 star for good research and good writing, 1 star for great choice of quotes and recipes. In other words: 3 out of 5.
Jessica Lange played said cousin and was deliciously devious and evil while still managing to awaken some sympathy in the viewer, simply because she was so badly treated by everyone. You almost felt that her spoilt niece deserved her fate for everything she did to Bette. Almost. Elisabeth Shue was great as the actress/courtesan whom Bette uses as the instrument of revenge against the people who wronged her - she was by turns innocent, spoiled and decadent. Hugh Laurie and Bob Hoskins were great comic relief - their duel was both funny and pathetic.
I found the book on Project Gutenberg and plan on reading it when I have the time.
Gave it 7 stars out of 10 (IMDb rating system) Am almost finished reading the book of the week - had to take a break for couple of days to sleep off a bad flu. Will finish it tonight and review it tomorrow.
If anyone has an explanation of why "biography" is becoming interchangeable with "history", please raise your hand.
I have sometimes wondered why people use the term "biography" for non-living subjects. It's almost as if "history" isn't fashionable anymore. Maybe my understanding of the word is different from everyone else's, but I thought you could only call a history a biography if the subject was an individual (human or animal) who was alive at some time.
It appears that "biography" also has a metaphorical sense I didn't know about which makes it acceptable to apply it to historical subjects that have a metaphorical "life".
A search on Amazon.co.uk brought up biographies of a ship and an aircraft, of a legend and an idea, of countries, a continent and of cities, of a revolution, a disease, a mathematical equation and a number of bands, all of the books fairly recent. And I didn't even bother looking through all the search results. I guess this indicates a trend.
One day I may blog my list of recommended background reading and viewing material for Pratchett - it's a long list and isn't quite finished yet.
I participate in link exchanges, but only with book and reading websites. Requests for link exchanges can be posted in Comments. I DO NOT exchange links with commercial websites, so don’t ask.
About me
What this blog is about:
Reading and books.
If you’re wondering about the name 52 books, it stems from a book-a-week reading challenge I set myself. The challenge is over, but I'm still reading, and will continue to blog about the books I read and my reading experiences, and other stuff connected with books and reading.
I rate the books (if I feel like it), giving them stars ranging from zero to 5.
Books I have already read (sporadically updated):Cover gallery
Note: Some of the entries are linked to the months the reviews appeared in, because I made several entries for each book. I have marked those reviews with an asterix (*). If you want to read the whole review from beginning to end, you must scroll down and read from the bottom up (but you probably already knew that ;-) >
