Books bought

On derivative non-fiction

the long trails of 'ibids'...

- David Crane reviews The Ariadne Objective in The Spectator

Chekh-it

The task of a writer is not to solve the problem, but to state the problem correctly.

- Chekhov

[via Dominic Hilton]

'Hashtag' oddness

Went, yesterday, to a screening of Frank which, unbeknownst to me, had the audio-impairment subtitles (which are, themselves, actually visually impairing; but no matter).

1) Frank, the character, an experimentalist musician/psychiatric patient, wears a big fibreglass head, and so has to narrate his real facial expressions so that folks have at least some sort of idea what he's feeling. This turns his utterances into kind of Twitter-speak: "I think that's a really great idea big enthusiastic grin", e.g.

2) Jon, the keyboardist/social media guru for the outfit, is forever updating his blog, posting messages to festival websites, or indeed Tweeting. But even though most of these ping up - in the correct format - on the big screen, whenever he is speaking-as-he-types the subtitles project the word 'hashtag', per se.

#itsthelittlethings

... tattoo will have no grammatical errors?

#knuckledragging

Fact

Any pussy can read a book.

- Generation Kill (TV version)

How Literature works

After the fateful day in 1929 when Virginia Woolf was prevented from walking across the lawn at Cambridge, any instance of an inquisitive woman being stopped by a beadle anywhere and under any circumstances is a reference to Woolf.

- Sofi Thanhauser, 'Hustler Scholars', Wag's Revue

Books I've actually finished lately: 29

Extra-curricular

The gangerman does pop his head in sometimes. I don't know if I've spelt it right, 'Gangerman', is it 'e-r' or is it 'a'? It is not a word we was taught in school.

- Martin McDonagh, The Beauty Queen of Leenane

Sunday reading

[with thanks to @leaheli]

Word to the wise-ass

When they themselves construct historic systems, they forget all other nations, all real events, and the theatrum mundi is confined to the Leipzig book fair.

- Karl Marx, The German Ideology

[reference courtesy of Sofi Thanhauser, 'Hustler Scholars', Wag's Revue]

Amazon FAIL

Titles gone begging - 4

The Master and Margarita: Henry James and the iniquities of the cocktail hour

Lit.

Man, reading

The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

- Ezra Pound

Witty

[with thanks (again) to Sophie and Mike O'Brien - whichever of them is responsible for the books in question.]

Books I've actually finished lately: 28

From the horse's mouth

What no-one understands is that I'm only a 'poet' when I'm actually writing the bloody stuff!

- Dylan Thomas: A Poet in New York

Unbelievable (AND inconsistent...!!)

As seen in Stoke Newington.

On the ongoing American obsession with the (American) short story

Moreover, I teach stories as well as telling them, and like most writing coaches I find the short story most useful for seminar purposes. You can hold a short story in your hand, like a lyric poem; see it whole; examine the function of individual sentences, even individual words, as you can't readily do with Bleak House or War and Peace. (This pedagogical convenience, together with the proliferation of creative writing programs in the U.S.A., must be largely responsible for the happy resurgence of the American short story - at a time when, paradoxically, the popular audience has never been smaller.)

- John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse

Found, at suburban rail station book-swap*

* also, winner of the Austin 'Danger' Powers Award for best subheading/author-name combo (EVER!!!)

New favourite magazine 'cover' (EVER!!!)

Keystroke twins - 22

alter
blues

Titles gone begging - 3

Sorry I Lied: confessions of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Probably not

According to the TLS (9/5/14)...

from some point during Second World War until its sale (sic) in 1979, the [American] copyright to Mein Kampf - and therefore all ensuing royalties(?) - was held by... the United States government.

Umm...

Themselves

[with thanks to Sophie and Mike O'Brien - who probably did not know I was in their kitchen.]

There's more to life than books, you know...

but not much more.

Mostly awful (but kudos for effort): librarian tattoos!

In-scription

A certain tristesse attends books with personal inscriptions being offered for sale.

- JC, TLS

Query

Superfluita (Babylonis)

Those 10 x 10 x 10 centimetre cubes that we saw earlier...

- Click presenter

Books I've actually finished lately: 27

InDefinition - 66

bad-schoolboy Latin, n. (sic)

Books I've actually finished lately: 26

Books I've actually finished lately: 25

Second-worst movie credit in my entire experience of films

FROM A CO-WRITER OF

THE TRANSPORTER

InDefinition - 65

Wilderness, n. a period of bad, florid poetry written in one's mid- to late-teenage years (that one will later attempt to disown)

Note to poets/song-writers

Avoid using brand names in your verses (and/or choruses).

It dates them - in both senses - in the worst cases to before the time of their release.

To wit:

Filmstar, an elegant sir in a Terylene shirt...

- Suede, 'Filmstar'

and some song I heard on Radio1 this morning that referred to 'American Apparel underwear'... (the first 16 words of which were 'hey').

Books I've actually finished lately: 24

(But who took the photo on p38...?)

Priorities

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

- Samuel Butler, Note-Books

InDefinition - 64

jetslag, n. waking up with an air-steward(ess)

Emily Dickinson - in context

There is no Frigate like a Book...
(And that is why they stay afloat.)

Books I've actually finished lately: 23

Contains Joint-Best Index in the History of Poetry (with Brian McGackin) - in this case, for a completely separate and as-yet-unwritten 'second book'. In the middle.

(NB also mental contents page(s). For mental contents.)

[Untitled]*

I think I am going to have to buy this book.

--
* 'Anticipation is everything!'
- Abraham Lincoln

In New York they have a law...

that, in the interests of gender equality, more or less compels every woman to go about topless in summer.

While reading a book.

Motherfuckers!

InDefinition - 63

periodic table, n. lady's diary

Books I've actually finished lately: 22

Taking French novels seriously

To the world at large there are no more deadly words than "Winner of the Prix Goncourt".

- Michael Dirda, TLS

OUPs!

Pineapples

according to the Urban Dictionary...

Banter.

Swords into plowshares; bullets into bullet-points

or

PowerPoint makes us stupid.

- Gen. James N. Mattis, USMC, in the New York Times

Meanwhile, in the B'more Psychiatric Hospital...

Giving your thoughts words encourages clarity.

- Hannibal (TV series)

Books I've actually finished lately: 21

mute vs. mutmut

Note that the word "mute" (from Latin mutus...) is regarded by linguists as an onomatopoeic formation referring not to silence but to a certain fundamental opacity of human being, which likes to show the truth by allowing it to be seen hiding. (Compare the Latin word mutmut, representation of a muttering sound, used by Apuleius).

- Anne Carson, NOX

Disproportionately pleased with my

Byron's drinking habits

ROB: Now, Trelawny is worried, cos he's concerned that Byron is gonna take Shelley's skull - because he already had a skull which he used to drink from. 

STEVE: Yeah, see, I think that lets Byron down... All that sort of great passionate poetry, and then you find out he used to drink from a novelty mug.

- The Trip to Italy

Cross-cut

There's a scene in the very excellent The Trip to Italy where the now-familiar Coogan-Brydon banterthon ends with "... That's the crux."

The next frame is a close-up of headstones in the foreigners' cemetery in Rome.

I'd really like to believe that this was intentional.

Abbr.

It’s really self-defeating if I have to explain abbreviations to you... FFS!

- The Thick of It, 3;7