Theme Thursday -- Sound -- What Language Is by John McWhorter

Hosted by Reading Between the Pages

Rules:

*A theme will be posted each week on Thursday
*Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading that features the theme
*Post it and don't forget to mention the author and title of the book
*Event is open for the whole week
*Link back to Reading Between the Pages

This week's theme is sound/music.  

 

Did you ever wonder why Ned is the nickname for Edward, Nellie for Ellen, and Nan for Ann?  After all, if someone's name is Maria and you come to be fond of her, your impulse is not to start calling her N'Maria -- and speakers of Old and Middle English were no sillier than we are.  In itself, even Ned for Ed seems a little goofy -- "Hey there, Ed, Eddie boy, good ol' . . . .Nnnnned!!!"  Why??? Today, if we have a friend named Aisha, the last thing we would start saying is "Ooh , here comes my . . . Nnnaisha!"  What was it with early Brits and n?  

 

The answer is a "mistake".  Just as in German, my is mein, in Old English, my was min [long i].  You would say, in modern parlance, mine book, mine cat.  And, you would often say, in affection, mine Ed, mine Ellen. As min changed to my, people started heaing the old n as the first sound in the names: mine Ed became my Ned.  The result was new versions of these names starting with n, used as nicknames -- i.e., names you use in affection, as people used to in saying mine Ed.

 

I'm thrilled to hear this explained, as I've often wondered about this exact thing.  I wonder if Sarah/Sallie has a similar explanation?

Theme Thursday -- Action -- Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary

Hosted by Reading Between the Pages

Rules:

*A theme will be posted each week on Thursday
*Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading that features the theme
*Post it and don't forget to mention the author and title of the book
*Event is open for the whole week
*Link back to Reading Between the Pages

This week's theme is action. 

Cover via Amazon

The conflict wracking the modern world is not, I think, best understood as a "clash of civilizations," if that proposition means we're-different-so-we-must-fight-until-there's-only-one-of-us.  It's better understood as the friction generated by two mismatched world histories intersecting.  Muslims were a crowd of people going somewhere.  Europeans and their offshoots were a crowd of people going somewhere.  When the two crowds crossed paths, much bumping and crashing resulted, and the crashing is still going on.

~page 355, Destiny Disrupted:  A History of the World through Muslim Eyes by Tamim Ansary

This is a great book that (as you can see by the title) looks at world history from a very different perspective than Westerners are familiar with reading about in their high school textbooks.   Jon recommended this book and I'm glad I picked it up. 

Book Beginnings & Friday 56 -- The Phone Book by Ammon Shea

Book Beginnings on Friday is a meme hosted by A Few More Pages. Anyone can participate; just share the opening sentence, or two, of your current read, making sure that you include the title and author so others know what you're reading.

A wonderful and picturesque story about telephone books appears in an old railroad journal from 1935.  An unnamed fruit company in Central America was having difficulty with local bandits, who were hijacking its trains.

The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice. Check out the rules and join in the fun.

Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
Turn to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog. Post a link along with your post back to this blog.

"They tell you to 'write it down' not memorize it.  Try writing a telephone number down in a dark booth while groping for a pencil, searching in an obsolete phone book and gasping for breath.  And all this in the name of efficiency!"

This book, by the author of Reading the OED, was a fun one to read -- lots of telephone-related trivia to impress friends and family.  :)  One bit I keep thinking about -- early telephone users were encouraged to end their call by saying "That's all."  I find this amusing and would like to implement it but I'm pretty sure it's actually too brusque to fit my style.  3.5/5 stars

Book Beginnings & Friday 56 -- How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming by Mike Brown

Book Beginnings on Friday is a meme hosted by A Few More Pages. Anyone can participate; just share the opening sentence, or two, of your current read, making sure that you include the title and author so others know what you're reading.

 As an astronomer, I have long had a professional aversion to waking up before dawn, preferring instead to see sunrise not as an early-morning treat, but as the signal that the end of a long night of work has come and it is finally time for overdue sleep.

The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice. Check out the rules and join in the fun.

Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
Turn to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog. Post a link along with your post back to this blog.

 

It was 2001, and though perhaps Arthur C. Clarke's predictions of space tourism and obelisks on satellites of Jupiter had not come true, it was finally time to get rid of the hundred-year-old technology of the photographic plates.  To some, it was a sad day when the photographic plate handling system at the 48-inch telescope was dismantled, though anyone who had ever had to work in the absolute darkness of the nighttime dome, moving plates from their holders to the telescope to the darkroom, could not have felt too bad to see it all go.

 

 

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming by Mike Brown is my latest non-fiction love (not quite a rival to Dan Ariely's place in my heart, but good stuff).  Brown does an excellent job of talking to non-astronomers about his discovery, in 2005, of a tenth planet and the turmoil his discovery brought to the world of astronomy and the world at large, eventually bringing the number of planets in our solar system to eight rather than ten.  I really really liked this book.  Accessible, humorous, and personal.  5/5 stars

Theme Thursday -- Shapes -- Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History

Hosted by Reading Between the Pages
Rules:
*A theme will be posted each week on Thursday
*Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading that features the theme
*Post it and don't forget to mention the author and title of the book
*Event is open for the whole week
*Link back to Reading Between the Pages
This week's theme is shapes.

Cover of Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History

More than one account mentions her skill as a quilter.  One says that when the refugees were hiding in the woods by day, "she pulled out her patchwork, and sewed together little bits, perhaps not more than an inch square, which were afterwards made into comforters for the fugitives in Canada."  (There is no evidence, however, that quilts hanging on clotheslines guided Tubman or any other runaway on a journey to freedom.)

page 120, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

I chose this quote because I'm always fascinated when I accept a given story or explanation as fact only to learn, many years later, that perhaps it's not all so clear cut....  I'm intrigued by the notion that quilts were never used as a form of communicating to fugitive slaves -- especially considering how often I've seen it presented as a fact.

At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson

This was an entertaining look at the history of the domestic life of humans.  Though I've been familiar with Bryson's name for quite a while, this is the first of his books I've actually picked up and I understand why people enjoy his writing. 

He uses the current home, a former rectory in Norfolk, built in 1851, as a starting point for a rambling, broad sweeping tale of just how exactly humans have developed their dwelling places over the years.  At Home's chapters are each assigned a room of the rectory (with the exception of the first two, which deal with the year & setting in which the house was built) and Bryson then regales the reader with all sorts of esoteric bits of information that he manages to connect with each room.  I enjoyed waiting for him to make those connections and the many anecdotes he shares with his readers. 

Friday 56 and Book Beginnings -- Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie & The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker

Hosted by Katy.

How to participate: Share the first line (or two) of the book you are currently reading on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you're reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence.

"It was dusk when he came to the ferry. 

He could have been there much earlier."

~from Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie

This beginning definitely caught my attention -- I wanted to know what he was putting off and why. The speaker is Dr. Arthur Calgary, just returned from two years in Antarctica.  An old newspaper article brought the realization that his amnesia directly before leaving for his expedition has put an innocent man in jail.  In his desire to "make things" right, he is traveling on the ferry to share the news that he assumes (incorrectly) will be a relief to the convicted man's family.  An interesting premise a bit out of the norm for Christie.  Enjoyable.






Hosted by Freda.
Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Link it here.

Anyone familiar with Yiddish knows a better example, the ultimate riposte to someone reasoning from improbable premises:  Az di bobe volt gehat beytsim volt zi geven mayn zeyde, "If my grandmother had balls , she'd be my grandfather."

~The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker

Book Beginnings & Friday 56 -- Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

Hosted by Katy.
How to participate: Share the first line (or two) of the book you are currently reading on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you're reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence.

To the rocket scientist, you are a problem.
~Packing for Mars:The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach



Hosted by Freda.
Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Link it here.


"We would need fifty grams of whiskey!"
~Packing for Mars:The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach

This was my (real-life) book club book for January.  We meet on the 27th to discuss.  As always, Mary Roach (Bonk, Stiff) doesn't disappoint. She has a knack for delving into topics others seldom touch and sharing what she learns with her reader in a way that never fails to entertain -- this time her topic is space exploration. I'll be interested to hear what my housemates (who both work at Lockheed Martin) think of the book. 

Friday 56 & Book Beginnings , a horrific day, and an origami giveaway

Well, I've had many, many better days. (and I don't normally evaluate each day before bed) Today was ludicrously rotten in all kinds of different ways -- but I'll focus on some positives --- I got new nose-pads for my glasses, a nice Craigslist man brought my heavy heavy laundry basket and box inside for me, I was not

Image via Wikipedia

hit by a car (today), my friend Holly is okay, and . . . um . . . Jeremy made me a gin and tonic while I was waiting at the apartment to come home.  There.  Good things.  Now I will probably read with Mark so Amy can get Lilly to sleep and then snuggle into bed myself.  I'm safe, I have comfy pajamas and Nico the cat is curled up with her body between my side and my left arm.  Good stuff.  Here is Mark to read, so I'll do some Friday memes and sign off.

Welcome to The Friday 56, now hosted by Freda’s Voice.
Here’s how it works:
Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Link it here.

The closing installment likened McCarthy to" a drunk at a party who was funny half an hour ago but now won't go home.  McCarthy is camped in America's front room trying to impress everybody by singing all the dirty songs and using all the four-letter words he knows.  The jokes are pointless, the songs unfunny, the profanity a bore."
~Getting It Wrong:  Ten Misreported Stories in American Journalism by W. Joseph Campbell

(Since my quote was a quote, I took the liberty of including the complete quote.) I'm just starting this one and think it will be very interesting but that it may be one of those books that keeps me very aware, while reading it, that it is non-fiction.  We'll see...

How to participate: All you have to do is share the first line (or two) of the book you are currently reading on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you're reading (and can go pick up a copy if it sounds good!). Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line and whether or not you liked the sentence(s).

"Hello, Gollie," said Bink. "What should we do today?"

~from Bink and Gollie by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee

This is my latest book crush -- DiCamillo and McGhee have already written many beloved children's books on their own and have now teamed up to write what we can only hope will be the first in a delightful new series.  The quirkiness of this book is right up my alley.  There are three chapters: "Don't You Need a New Pair of Socks?", "P.S. I'll Be Back Soon", and "Give a Fish a Home".   Really -- check this book out -- it's good stuff -- It's the kind of book that has some great quotes you'll find yourself incorporating into your household conversations. (-Do I smell pancakes? -No.  -Will I smell pancakes?)

While we're at it, head over to Freda's Voice to enter to win World's Best Origami!  What better way to spend your next rainy/snowy day?

Teaser Tuesdays -- October 5, 2010 -- The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers! 

It was so happy to have a familiar food, after weeks of nothing but wilted flowers, that for several days it slept right next to the huge piece of portobello, waking throughout the day to reach up and nibble before sinking back into a well-fed slumber.  Each night a surprisingly large portion of the mushroom would vanish, until, by the end of the week, the very last piece had disappeared.

p.30, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

This is a lovely little book that my daughter and I have been enjoying (it's classed/shelved as adult non-fiction).  The author is bedridden with an illness -- holding a book for even a few minutes takes a level of strength and concentration that she just doesn't have.  When a friend finds a small snail in the woods, the snail becomes Bailey's bedside companion.  We aren't quite 1/4 of the way through but I'm pretty sure I'll be giving this one five stars on Amazon. 

Friday 56: The Summer of the Great-Grandmother

From Storytime with Tonja and Friends

Rules:

* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
*Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

It was not just a bad headache; it was a cerebral hemorrhage, and Liz was dead before morning.  Liz died on the twenty-sixth of November.  The funeral was on the twenty-ninth:  my birthday. 

~The Summer of the Great-Grandmother by Madeleine L'Engle

Cover of The Summer of the Great-Grandmother

I had this book sitting by the computer waiting to be reviewed -- with lots of little strips of paper sticking out where I found phrases or paragraphs I especially liked.  It's a work of non-fiction about the summer L'Engle's mother died.

My world is not the world of L'Engle's family -- children eating dinner separately, trips to the Continent, summer houses, hanging out with the Empress of France or General Custer, owning a house with a marble privy designed by Thomas Jefferson -- but nonetheless I can identify with some of her thoughts and experiences. 

L'Engle came to my college when I was a student there.  I attended her lecture, but remember very little -- mostly an image of a scarf -- so I guess it was winter -- but I don't know if it was her scarf, mine, or my friend Steve's.  I've read more of her writing in my last 15 years than I did in my first 20 and wish I had the opportunity to hear that lecture all over again -- I think it would mean something different to me now.

Some more snippets I wanted to share...

I realize, with a pang, how privileged we are to be able to keep my mother with us.  This is how it should be, but what would I do if we lived in a tiny home and did not have the girls and Clara to help?   . . .  And even though we have room, and the girls to help us, there are still those who think that my mother should be put away.  Put away.  Everything in me revolts at the idea.  But my belief that we are supposed to share all of life with each other, dying and decay as well as feasting and fun, is being put to the test. (p 28)

. . . I do not think that a house can be a happy house if no one has cried in it, if no one has died in it.  If this seems contradictory, I can't help it.  I rebel against death, yet I know that it is how I respond to death's inevitability that is going to make me less or more fully alive. (p 23-9)

I'm much more use to family and friends when I'm not physically and spiritually depleted than when I spend my energies as though they were unlimited.  They are not. (p 46-7)

The mother of my childhood and adolescence and very young womanhood existed for me solely as mother, and I suppose it is inescapable that for a long time we know our parents only as parents, that their separate identity as full persons in their own right unfolds only gradually, if at all. (p 88)

If I have to conform to provable literalism I not only rebel, I propose immediate revolution.  How do I make more than a fumbling attempt to explain that faith is not legislated, that it is not a small box which works twenty-four hours a day?  If I "believe"for two minutes once every month or so, I'm doing well. (p 142)

I prayed very badly in church yesterday.  I often pray badly when I try to say my prayers at home.  But if I stop going to church, no matter how mad church makes me, if I stop praying at home, no matter how futile it sometimes seems, then "real" prayer is never going to come.  (p 144)

 

Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz

"If you mortgaged your family's future on your faith in Bernie Madoff; if you hitched your whole wagon to a doctrine or deity you no longer believe in; if you were wrong about someone you loved and the kind of life you thought the two of you would live together; if you have betrayed your own principles in any of the countless dark ways we can surprise ourselves over the course of a lifetime:  if any of this or anything like has happened to you, then you have suffered in the space of pure wrongness."  Being Wrong:  Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz, p.187

Cover via Amazon

I picked up Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz at the library after noticing it was on my Amazon recommendations.  Schulz explores why it is so hard for us to admit being wrong (especially without the phrase "I was wrong, but..."), the plus side of error, big mistakes and trivial mistakes, why everyone makes mistakes, how we view those mistakes in retrospect, the process we go through when we change our minds about something we were once certain about, and so much more.


If you are a non-fiction reader, you will probably want to check this one out.  There are some drier parts of the book but Schulz's debut is also full of fascinating research and anecdotes.


A few excerpts:


As with dying, we recognize erring as something that happens to everyone, without feeling that it is either plausible or desirable that it will happen to us.  Accordingly, when mistakes happen anyway, we typically respond as if they hadn't, or as if they shouldn't have:  we deny them, wax defensive about them, ignore them, downplay them, or blame them on somebody else.  p.6

Doctors don't teach medical students the theory of bodily humors, and astronomy professors don't teach their students to calculate the velocity of the fifty-five concentric spheres Aristotle thought composed the universe.  This is practical and efficient pedagogy, but it shores up our tacit assumption that current belief is identical with true belief, and it reinforces our general sense of rightness.  p. 21

Believing something on the basis of messy, sparse, limited information really is how we err.  But it is also how we think.  What makes us right is what makes us wrong.  p.122

In the optimistic model of wrongness, error is not a sign that our past selves were failures and falsehoods.  Instead, it is one of those forces, like sap and sunlight, that imperceptibly helps another organic entity -- us human beings -- to grow up. p. 289

As soon as we think we are right about something, we narrow our focus, attending only to details that support our belief, or ceasing to listen altogether.  By contrast, when we are aware that we could be wrong, we are far more inclined to hear other people out.  p. 310



And finally,


Being wrong is hard and humbling, and sometimes even dangerous, but in the end it is a journey, and a story.  Who really wants to stay home and be right when you can don your armor, spring up on your steed and go forth to explore the world?  True, you might get lost along the way, get stranded in a swamp, have a scare at the edge of a cliff; thieves might steal your gold, brigands might imprison you in a cave, sorcerers might turn you into a toad -- but what of that?  To fuck up is to find adventure:  it is in that spirit that this book is written.  p.42-43

Teaser Tuesdays -- Someone to Kill and Eat

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!

* Grab your current read.

* Let the book fall open to a random page.

* Share with us any two (2) "teaser" sentences from that page.

* You also need to share the title of the book that you're getting your "teaser" from... that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

In 2003, Armin Meiwes, a 42-year-old computer expert, went online looking for someone to kill and eat.  After several interviews, he chose Bernd Brandes.

~p 25, How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like by Paul Bloom

This book was interesting but not rave-worthy for me.