A CHRISTMAS CAROL ANNOTATIONS
WHAT WITH CHRISTMAS only four days away, I have just completed my annual reading of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, in the annotated edition, of course. Culinary aspects of Dickens’ tale … Continue reading
ETYMOLOGY: THUG
I RECOGNIZED that the word “thug” had to do with Hindi thugees, but that was where my knowledge ended. Now that we have a thug in our country’s highest office, … Continue reading
ETYMOLOGY: RHODOMONTADE AND OTHER CHARACTER TRAITS
THIS RESEARCH STARTED with an erudite, if perhaps overwrought, description of Britain’s Boris Johnson in the London Review of Books, August 15, 2019: Ferdinand Mount, one of the article’s co-authors, … Continue reading
MANGA TIDBITS PART 2
YESTERDAY WE began a celebration of manga, the Japanese genre of pictorial storytelling. Today in Part 2, we’ll see how manga pacing and text presentation set it apart from the … Continue reading
MANGA TIDBITS PART 1
THE JAPANESE WORD マンガ, manga means “pictures running riot,” a good description of this genre of pictorial storytelling. Or as comics authority Paul Gravett terms it, “more than telling a … Continue reading
CHAUCER TIDBITS
A NEW 624-PAGE biography of Geoffrey Chaucer aroused my interest. Not quite enough, I admit, to read all 624 pages yet, but sufficient to enjoy reading a review of this … Continue reading
RACKETEERING ETYMOLOGIES
THE NEWS CONCERNING Trump, Giuliani, omertà, getting thrown under the bus, and other mob-speak got me wondering how the nice French sports racquet evolved into something as sordid as racketeering. … Continue reading
UPDATING ALICE
MARTIN GARDNER’S Annotated Alice, 1960, was the first in my collection of annotated classics. Indeed, Gardner’s was the first in the series, many of which I have. Wife Dottie recently … Continue reading
BRUNI ON TRUMP’S ENGLISH
FRANK BRUNI composes the best lines in today’s journalism. In The New York Times, October 26, 2019, he titles his analysis “ ‘Human Scum,’ ‘Lynching,’ and Trump’s Tortured English.” Bruni’s … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 
A TYPEFACE GETTING NO RESPECT
THE POINT OF putting a thought into print is to preserve and share it. The choice of typography (this word from the Greek: loosely “an impression pictured”) is a complex … Continue reading →