FROM TABLET TO SCROLL TO CODEX TO BOOK
WE THINK OF books as being on particular topics. Even anthologies have a common theme: mysteries, short stories, and the like. But it wasn’t always that way. Here are tidbits … Continue reading
DICTIONARIES—DULL, DRY, AND MUSTY?
SAMUEL JOHNSON’s A DICTIONARY of the English Language, 1755, is anything but dull. Nor is Ambrose Bierce’s A Devil’s Dictionary, 1911, at all dry and musty. The tradition is maintained … Continue reading
☞ HURRAH FOR THE MANICULE! ☜
PERHAPS I GOT your attention today thanks to a pair of manicules bracketing the headline above. I hadn’t known their typographic name until reading about it in Keith Houston’s Shady … Continue reading
HENGWRT PINKHURST TIDBITS PART 2
THE HENGWRT CHAUCER is the oldest known manuscript of The Canterbury Tales. Yesterday here at SimanaitisSays, I shared several tidbits of Christopher De Hamel’s encounter with the Hengwrt at the … Continue reading
HENGWRT PINKHURST TIDBITS PART 1
ADAM PINKHURST was a scribe during Chaucer’s time, the late 1300s and early 1400s. The Hengwrt Chaucer, c. 1400, is the earliest known example of Chaucer’s most famous work, The … Continue reading
THE PLAZA, AS RECOUNTED BY TINA BROWN
A BOOK REVIEW may inform. It may infuriate. It may even encourage a purchase. And, like Tina Brown’s “Theater of Dreams: A Tale of Boom and Bust at the Plaza … Continue reading
CARMINA BURANA REVISITED
WHO ISN’T AWED by Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana? Its throbbing rhythm in O Fortuna/Velut luna/Statu variabilis (“O Fortune/Like the Moon/Changeable”). Its salacious lyrics composed for lusty 12th-century monks. And, for … Continue reading
JACOB REES-MOGG—ANOTHER BRIT, ANOTHER REAL PIECE OF WORK
THE NEW BRITISH prime minister, Boris Johnson has made Jacob Rees-Mogg leader of the House of Commons. I’d have thought a prime minister would be the leader, and historically often … Continue reading
HOW DO YOU SAY THAT IN ENGLISH?
A LETTER TO the London Review of Books got me thinking about words that don’t readily translate to English. Jem Thomas, Bristol, cited the Portuguese word saudade and the Welsh … Continue reading
ON-LOAN WORDS IN JAPANESE
MAKIKO ITOH HAS the online food blog justhungry.com, subtitled “Japanese recipes & more.” And, indeed, Maki, as she has been known since 2003, writes about so much more than food. … Continue reading
