(Audio)Books I've actually finished recently: 94

Frankly, I felt the film was punchier.

Favourite footnotes: HONOURABLE MENTION*

(I forget where I read this, but if my memory serves me it was in some reliable source.)

- Bertrand Russell, 'On the Value of Scepticism'

--
* OK, so it's not an actual footnote. But it should have been!

Dear Spotify,

Re your Mikado advertisement

there is no such word as 'mischeevious'.

Please tell your voice-over chap to get a grip on himself.

Yours, &c.

Importance of grammatical accuracy

InDefinition - 80

adjutantrum, n, when a not-particularly-high-ranking officer spazzes out at those beneath her, in the interests of her own career advancement.

In defence of Moleskines

I use Moleskine notebooks, not because they’re any better than the alternatives, but because they make me feel like a proper writer, and not some inadequately-medicated schizophrenic, taking dictation from the mad voices jabbering in his head. Which, at times, is what the writer’s life is like.

- Anthony McGowan, on his website

Valid logic. But let the record reflect, though, that I fundamentally disagree.

The terrible truth about social media

Thank fuck for Lydia Davis

If I went to an academic conference on literary theory, I would have been bored out of my mind! But a town meeting about potholes, that interests me.

- Lydia Davis, in conversation with Ane Farsethas

(Can't say I agree with her about the dictionaries, though. I like me a good dictionary.)

There's a particu'ly dark place in my heart

for wise-ass spelling-and/or-grammar-type jokes

that have mistakes in them.

[UPDATE: Hereafter, 'The Nth Circle'.]

Bad Sex - ILLUSTRATED!

Hyssop!!?

On the uses and abuses of vernacular

It took Dante, in the late Middle Ages, to take the revolutionary step of writing in his own Tuscan dialect. It would be a mistake, though, to see him with modern eyes as some kind of champion of inclusiveness. He did, after all, use Latin to make his case in On Eloquence in the Vernacular.

- Ana Menéndez, 'Are We Different People in Different Languages?'

Better World Books

do it right.

(according to Jeevan Sukumaran)

Books I've actually finished lately: 93

Ellmann's biography of Wilde was one of the first big books I read (/finished), aged about 16.

From which event extends a trail of more-or-less predictable consequences...

On sincerity

I'm sure you've had to say things you haven't meant before. You've read friends'poetry...? Had girlfriends...?

- The West Wing

(Audio)Books I've actually finished lately: 92

Knocked on the head in four days flat, whilst decorating.

(Tip: entirely comprehensible when read a) this well, b) at pace, and/or c) by an Irishman.)

Books I've actually finished lately: 91

Perfect operatic material. Y'know... If anyone's commissioning.

And quite a decent poem

about religion.

The worst poem I have ever seen