From 50 books.
Thursday 21 June 2007
Wednesday 20 June 2007
Mother Tongue
This is the first time I've contributed to the CNG Lending Library blog so I just thought I'd share what I'm reading.
I'm about a third of the way through Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue. Anyone who has read Bill Bryson before knows his work is always an entertaining read, and this book in particular is of interest to all my fellow wordsmiths (in fact it's a must-read) - it basically goes into all the intricacies of the English language. Anyone who wishes to borrow it is welcome to do so when I'm done. Here's a passage with which to leave you:
"Even when you strip out its obsolete senses, round still has twelve uses as an adjective, nineteen as a noun, seven as a transitive verb, five as an intransitive verb, one as an adverb and two as a preposition. But the polysemic champion must be set. Superficially it looks a wholly unassuming monosyllable, the verbal equivalent of a single-celled organism. Yet it has 58 uses as a noun, 126 as a verb, and 10 as a participal adjective. Its meanings are so various and scattered that it takes the Oxford English Dictionary 60,000 words - the length of a short novel - to discuss them all. A foreigner could be excused for thinking that to know set is to know English."
I'm about a third of the way through Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue. Anyone who has read Bill Bryson before knows his work is always an entertaining read, and this book in particular is of interest to all my fellow wordsmiths (in fact it's a must-read) - it basically goes into all the intricacies of the English language. Anyone who wishes to borrow it is welcome to do so when I'm done. Here's a passage with which to leave you:
"Even when you strip out its obsolete senses, round still has twelve uses as an adjective, nineteen as a noun, seven as a transitive verb, five as an intransitive verb, one as an adverb and two as a preposition. But the polysemic champion must be set. Superficially it looks a wholly unassuming monosyllable, the verbal equivalent of a single-celled organism. Yet it has 58 uses as a noun, 126 as a verb, and 10 as a participal adjective. Its meanings are so various and scattered that it takes the Oxford English Dictionary 60,000 words - the length of a short novel - to discuss them all. A foreigner could be excused for thinking that to know set is to know English."
Tuesday 19 June 2007
A Novel approach
So lat night I had an hour or two to myself after the gym and I began work on my masterpiece: The Definitive Australian Gay Classic.
This hasn't been done before, to my knowledge.
It fits somewhere into the same genre of those old Crawford productions like All The Rivers Run. A bit like A Town Like Alice (the second half). A feast of the Baz Luhrmann variety. With a bit of Brokeback Mountain thrown in.
Priscilla Queen of the Nineteenth Century.
In novel form.
Not a movie. Which the above would infer.
I plan to be the Colleen McCollough of homos.
I post this here in the hope it will encourage my fellow literary-types to also write. The Lending Library could expand its borders a little.
This hasn't been done before, to my knowledge.
It fits somewhere into the same genre of those old Crawford productions like All The Rivers Run. A bit like A Town Like Alice (the second half). A feast of the Baz Luhrmann variety. With a bit of Brokeback Mountain thrown in.
Priscilla Queen of the Nineteenth Century.
In novel form.
Not a movie. Which the above would infer.
I plan to be the Colleen McCollough of homos.
I post this here in the hope it will encourage my fellow literary-types to also write. The Lending Library could expand its borders a little.
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