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

Oh, come on!!

#halfwitslag

Too cryptic?

Try here.

Not from Blackadder(?) - 1

His mother was a religiously minded Andalusian cleaning lady called Mercedes...

- Nicholas Rankin, in Literary Review