![]() Use as scholarly sources of information and insight. Ture, one need not read them all rather one need only want to read them and long to begin as they stay at the ready. Bernard Lewis, Notes on a century, 2012, pp. And even when not actually reading the book, merely looking at it on the shelf evokes that special pleasure one derives from ownership of some beautiful and cherished object. While reading appreciation of any particular passage is enhanced by the comfortable awareness that it will always be there - the same words, the same lines, the same pages - whenever one might chose to return to it. To begin with, one could chose the time and place of reading the book, unconstrained by the need to return it to the library or other lawful owner. What more can we say?’ (Carol Shields, Mary Swann).Īt an early age I made an important discovery that the pleasure of reading a good book could be greatly increased and renewed at will if one actually owned it. ‘Our books, dear Book Browser, are a comfort, a presence, a diary of our lives. While we were away in NYC a friend who liked my choice of quotations at Library Thing: I keep the others in my office.” (Eco, “How to justify a private library.”) Umberto Eco gave me ammunition long ago: when the person asks, sceptically, “Have you read them all?” I am to answer, “No, these are the ones I have to read by the end of the month. ‘La bibliothèque devient une aventure’ (Umberto Eco quoted by Chantal Thomas, Souffrir). ![]() Altogether (upstairs in the attic, and downstairs in this 6 room house) we have some 40+ bookcases Since we joined Library Thing I know how many I do have: I appear to own 9810 books - downstairs. Or that on their second or third visit they will slyly acknowledge in some way that I live in a “library” as if I should try to hide this or they are saying something I will take offense at. I expect you will not be surprised to learn that people who visit me for the first time will ask me why I own so many books with the implication I need to justify this. This anthology is bursting with them: tristful, howbeit, swinge-bucklers, horripilation, sooth, beseem, maugre, haute, orgulous, agnize, beadsmen, racqueters, scatterlings, ribalds, wasselers, giglots, ronyons, bonarobas, ostent, amort, nathless … Ods Pitikins!įor a funny take on the joys of archaic language, go back on our blog to a video of comedian John Branyan's Elizabethan-style retelling of "The Three Little Pigs.And especially those who value books and own a goodly number. "Slumbrously" … you can almost physically feel the sensation of drifting into sleep, sinking drowsily onto a soft pillow in a cradle of dreaming. For instance, "slumbrously", which I came across recently in a review – what a gorgeous assemblage of letters and sounds. It's especially nice if the word itself is, well, especially nice. I love old words anyway, and those moments when you stumble upon one that's strange to you. Each is a surprise in itself your mind is constantly forced to check itself, think back over what it's processed, and ask, "Do I know what that means? Do I think I know? Can I guess at the meaning from its context?" (And sometimes, you don't really want to know anyway.) There's a challenge to unfamiliar words, or even vaguely recognised ones you can't "skim-read" as normal, but must make your way in a stately fashion through each sentence. He found himself standing back to marvel at "a single sentence of 89 words, some unfamiliar, the entire passage peculiar and evocative, almost gratuitously verbose in this era of controlled prose and a 'less is more' aesthetic." He wrote: In a recent piece in The Guardian's Books Blog, author and journalist Darragh McManus delved into the land of archaic literature with an Oxford University Press collection of Gothic fiction, Tales of the Macabre. And as a bonus, they're available in newly released paperback classics or even in e-book form. ![]() ![]() Vocabulary-rich literary classics are rife with words that used to be part of everyday speech and now we encounter much less often. It doesn't have to be a dusty volume shedding its leather binding into your coffee like so much unwanted nutmeg. Anyone seeking out a rich and unusual vocabulary need search no further than the pages of an old book.
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