InDefinition - 68

Volvic, adj. in the manner of a Swedish car manufacturer

In 1996 he took up a position as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester and settled permanently in England in 1970.

- jacket copy for A Place in the Country* (emphases mine)

--
* This book costs £20, and has fewer than 200 pages.

Yes

The art of writing is the attempt to contain the teeming black scrawl which everywhere threatens to gain the upper hand, in the interests of maintaining a halfway functional personality.

- WG Sebald, A Place in the Country

Very sorry

never to have laid eyes on a copy of this.

(Any have decent literary connections in Bangkok?)

Recommended

by Dominic Hilton.

Books I've actually finished lately: 33

Frenemies

(A new one on me.)

Hitchens v Amis; Big Papa v F Scott; you get the idea.

Worth it for the closing line on Mormon Nailer.

Top trivia

[via Matt Risley - as writ]

Advice given to me yesterday (by a BBC executive)

Just don't turn into Jeanette Winterson.

Fact

[via Chris Mac - obviously]

Poets

LACKEY: The poets sing your battle-praises in the halls! 

ÆTHELWULF: That's because I pay them. If you paid them, they'd sing your praises too. That's poets for you.

- Vikings

Oscar Wilde - in context

I believe God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability. And vice versa.

Circular vocabulary

TO:  Gen. Abizaid
CC:  Gen. Myers
FROM:  Donald Rumsfeld [and initialled] 

Attached are the definitions of "guerilla warfare", "insurgency" and "unconventional warfare". They come from the Pentagon dictionary. 

Thanks.

[via Errol Morris, The Unknown Known]

Confessio

He was most comfortable with men who had the abstract madness of autodidacts, like his mentor, Lord Suffolk, like the English patient.

- Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

Keystroke twins - 24*

sites
river

--
* one for the arch. & anth. brigade

InDefinition - 67

irredentist, n. one who wants his teeth fixed by a Saxon

Unfortunate, but true

Not being raised in the church will have an effect on your literary frames of reference.

... says History Today.

Books I've actually finished lately: 32

Books I've actually finished lately: 31

Books I've actually finished lately: 30

Bejaysus.

Actual Grammar Nazis...

[from The Daily Dot, via Andrey Belopopsky]

Unfamous last words - 3

... moose ... Indian ...

- Henry David Thoreau

Cambridge finals students flummoxed

by South African poem with no words.

In the circumstances, I would like to know how many of them addressed the likelihood that Koos Kombuis's 'Tipp-Ex-Sonate' is probably also in translation...

[Baie dankie to Alexandra Coghlan, for the tip-ex-off]

Blackheath Literary Institution

Ohyesindeed

Paxman says poets must start engaging with ordinary people

Keystroke twins - 23 (a & b)

intern
govern

internment
government