Guide for Writers: Latin Phrases It’s a matter of taste and style, but not long ago American writers attempted to demonstrate their credentials to the world by including Latin and French phrases within works. A dash of Latin was expected of the moderately educated throughout the Western world. annus mirabilis - wonderful year arbiter elegantiae - judge of the elegant; one who knows the good things in life bona fides - good faith; credentials carpe diem - sieze the day; enjoy the present casus belli - cause justifying a war caveat emptor - buyer beware cui bono? caeteris paribus - all things being equal de facto - of fact; it is de gustibus non est disputandum - no disputing tastes; there is no accounting for taste Dei gratia - by the grace of God Deo gratias - thanks to God Deo volente - God willing dis aliter visum - it seemed otherwise to the gods Dominus vobiscum - Lord be with you dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - sweet and seemly it is to die for one’s country ecce homo - behold man ex cathedra - with authority
Trying to Say Goodbye This is the long anticipated third collection of poems by Adil Jussawalla, who continues to be a seminal figure in post-independence Indian poetry. Jussawalla?s is an intimate but still sharp voice, fearless but melancholic, marked by a darting, wily syntax, bristling rhymes, and an original prosody. Here, he moves across time to address an array of histories, both personal and public. Of Jussawalla? About the Author Adil Jussawalla was born in Bombay in 1940. The 10 Most Disturbing Books Of All Time In my younger days if I heard a book or movie was disturbing or hard to handle I generally took that as a challenge. Most books generally turned out to not be too bad, but occasionally I’d come across something that would leave me with a sick feeling in my stomach for weeks. I’ve largely outgrown this “genre” of late, but here are my picks for the ten most disturbing books of all time. Any one of these books is capable of leaving you feeling a little depressed at the least, and permanently scarred at the worst. 10. Blindness is a book with a truly horrifying scenario at it’s heart: what if everyone in the world were to lose their sight to disease in a short period of time? 9. Anti drug crusaders should stop airing goofy commercials that nobody takes seriously and start pushing to have Requiem For A Dream made required reading for every high schooler in the country. 8. Naked Lunc is another ode to drug addiction. 7. 6. Bleak. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.
Brain Pickings Berners Street Hoax The Berners Street Hoax was perpetrated by Theodore Hook in the City of Westminster, London, in 1810. Hook had made a bet with his friend, Samuel Beazley, that he could transform any house in London into the most talked-about address in a week, which he achieved by sending out thousands of letters in the name of Mrs Tottenham, who lived at 54 Berners Street, requesting deliveries, visitors, and assistance. On 27 November, at five o’clock in the morning, a sweep arrived to sweep the chimneys of Mrs Tottenham's house. The maid who answered the door informed him that no sweep had been requested, and that his services were not required. A few moments later another sweep presented himself, then another, and another, 12 in all. Theodore Hook, perpetrator of the hoax Hook stationed himself in the house directly opposite 54 Berners Street, from where he and his friend spent the day watching the chaos unfold. The site at 54 Berners Street is now occupied by the Sanderson Hotel. See also[edit] Notes
"Come closer to me, come closer, I promise you, it will be beautiful." Sometimes I wonder if the element that makes a good love story is the very kind of intrinsic impossibility that slits its own throat, the painful don’t or won’t or can’t. Does the sunshine need the shadow? Or does the shadow make up the sunshine? As a lover of old correspondence and a romantic of any time and age before the 80s—I’ve only officially existed since 1983, says Irony—I ran across this bit of love exchange between Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, protagonists of a beautiful mess in the early twentieth century. And how we wants it, how we needs it, how we loves the treasure of writing letters. But oh, how we miss it and mistake it for yet another “precious” we must have. Maybe we’ve hit the wrong mark when it comes to love once again. 80 years (if we’re lucky) gives us plenty of time for many shades of love. If there’s a love-worn cynical in you tell him, tell her, to sit still for a few minutes and realize that maybe we do live, after all, in a world of Yes. Dear Henry, You are right.
The Books That Changed Your Lives I have a feeling that many of these are favourite books rather than life-changing. Certainly I love "The Hitch-hikers Guide ...", "Ender" and "Dune" but I don't think they have changed my life. I also love "The Lord of the Rings", by coincidence I married an Arwen so maybe that counts in my case. Jared Diamond's book is very interesting but hardly life-changing. In my opinion "2001: A Space Odyssey" had a huge effect on the way people perceive the benefits of science, undermining the positive attitude created by the Apollo program. "1984" had the biggest effect on me, changing my view of government, communication and words. I have read but cannot recall much of "Zen ..." but you have inspired me to pick it up again and the two Dawkins books are waiting on my "to be read" pile.
100 best first lines from novels Following is a list of the 100 best first lines from novels, as decided by the American Book Review, a nonprofit journal published at the Unit for Contemporary Literature at Illinois State University: 1. Call me Ishmael. - Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851) 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. - James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939) 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 124 was spiteful. - Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987) 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100.
From the Summits of Empire IN THE EARLY HOURS OF 15 JANUARY 1934, an earthquake of magnitude 8.4 rocked Nepal and Bihar. Fissures as much as five kilometres deep opened in the earth, exhaling a choking dust and swallowing hillsides and villages. Ten thousand people died without leaving their beds. Although Kathmandu was relatively unscathed, nearby Patan was upheaved; large portions of the prime minister’s private palace were razed, and the town’s Durbar Square filled up with rubble. In distant Calcutta, the bell tower and steeple of St Paul’s Cathedral collapsed, the crash accompanied by a tremendous clang. Since the Gurkha War of 1814, the Kingdom of Nepal had been off limits to foreigners, especially the English; available maps had been entirely the work of Indian surveyors unsupervised by British colonial officials. Despite thick spectacles, Auden had a mountaineer’s eye for what he called “the great Himalayan tide”. For the 1933 Everest expedition, hopes were high. The frantic washing of the grimy fact.
The 16 Best Dystopian Books Of All Time Dystopian novels—stories of the horrific future—are so common as to be almost forgettable. Here is a compilation of what I believe are the 16 greatest of the genre. I could happily list twice as many that are amazing, but these are the best. 16. Best known for his Narnia novels, CS Lewis also wrote a trilogy dealing with visiting other planets—well the first two books did. 15. Wow, can you get more polar opposite of CS Lewis than Margaret Atwood? 14. While perhaps not as well known as some, John Christopher (the pen name of Samuel Youd) wrote a fantastic trilogy of young adult novels, set in a far future where the world has reverted to a feudal society after a global ecological disaster. 13. This novel, combined with Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide are all you need to face the inevitable zombie apocalypse. 12. I’m sure by now everyone’s seen the movie version of this classic comic, and I hate to sound like Comic Book Guy, but the graphic novel was far, far superior. 11. 10. 9. 8.
Randomly Awesome Words lapse: Landsat Satellite Images of Climate Change, via Google Earth Engine TIME and Space | By Jeffrey Kluger Editors note:On Nov. 29, 2016, Google released a major update expanding the data from 2012 to 2016. Read about the update here. Spacecraft and telescopes are not built by people interested in what’s going on at home. Rockets fly in one direction: up. Telescopes point in one direction: out. That changed when NASA created the Landsat program, a series of satellites that would perpetually orbit our planet, looking not out but down. Over here is Dubai, growing from sparse desert metropolis to modern, sprawling megalopolis. It took the folks at Google to upgrade these choppy visual sequences from crude flip-book quality to true video footage. These Timelapse pictures tell the pretty and not-so-pretty story of a finite planet and how its residents are treating it — razing even as we build, destroying even as we preserve. Chapter 1: Satellite Story | By Jeffrey Kluger But in 1966, Udall and his staff had an idea. 1 of 20 Aaron Vincent Elkaim / Boreal Collective