There’s A Word for That: Salubrious

Most Americans spend about $2,000 to $2,500 a week when they go on vacation. Although it is well established that taking a vacation is good for your health, according to a U.S. Travel Association survey, more than 50% of Americans forfeit their paid time off. In the article, “How Taking a Vacation Improves Your Well-Being” in the Harvard Business Review (2023), Rebecca Zucker notes the many benefits of a vacation: (1) mental: greater opportunity for rest and sleep, which unclutters the mind, boosts creativity, and reduces stress, sadness, irritability, and anxiety; (2) physical: reduction in stress hormones and lower blood pressure, allowing immune system to recover, lowering risk of common illness (like colds and flu) and more serious illnesses, like heart disease; (3) soul: escaping the demands of the workday, a person can tune back into their authentic self, and seek inner reflection about the meaning of life and one’s journey. In short, we can say with a great deal of certainty that a vacation is salubrious. Salubrious is defined as favorable to or promoting well-being, health, or wholesomeness. The word is derived from the Latin salubris, meaning “promoting health,” derived from salus (“health, welfare”), which derived from the Proto-Indo-European root sol- (“whole, well-kept”). The word, pronounced “suh LOO bree us,” is often used to refer to the helpful effect of air or climate.

Interestingly, despite its usefulness, you don’t hear or read the word salubrious very often. There are several synonyms with related meanings. Merriam-Webster provides several examples:

Healthful implies a positive contribution to a healthy condition.

Wholesome applies to what benefits, builds up, or sustains physically, mentally, or spiritually.

Salutary describes something corrective or beneficially effective, even though it may in itself be unpleasant.

Variants of salubrious include: salubriously, salubriousness, and salubrity.

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

Read related posts: Words Invented by Dickens
What is the Sword of Damocles?
There’s a Word for That: Esprit de l’escalier
There’s a Word for That: Jouissance
There’s a Word for That: Abibliophobia
There’s a Word for That: Petrichor
There’s a Word for That: Deipnosophist
There’s a Word for That: Pareidolia
There’s a Word for That: Macroverbumsciolist
There’s a Word for That: Ultracrepidarian
There’s a Word for That: Cacology

To learn more about Alexander Atkins Design please visit www.alexatkinsdesign.com

You Are Part of My Existence… You Have Been in Every Line I Have Ever Read

“You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since — on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!”

From Charles Dickens’ 13th novel, Great Expectations, published in serial form from 1860 to 1861 and in book form as a three-volume set in 1861.  In this excerpt from Chapter 44, the novel’s protagonist, an orphan named Pip, eloquently professes his love to Estella after she has informed him that she is marrying another man [Bentley Drummle], whom Pip considers a “mean, stupid brute.” She explains, “I am going to be married to him. The preparations for my marriage are making, and I shall be married soon… [After I am married, you] will get me out of your thoughts in a week.”

Dickens’ friend, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, an English writer and politician, read an early draft of the book and convinced Dickens to write a happier ending. In a letter to his biographer, Dickens explained, “You will be surprised to hear that I have changed the end of Great Expectations from and after Pip’s return to Joe’s… Bulwer, who has been, as I think you know, extraordinarily taken with the book, strongly urged it upon me, after reading the proofs, and supported his views with such good reasons that I have resolved to make the change. I have put in as pretty a little piece of writing as I could, and I have no doubt the story will be more acceptable through the alteration.”

If the name Bulwer-Lytton sounds familiar, it is because San Jose State holds the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for the worst opening sentence to a novel, inspired by Bulwer-Lytton’s famous opening line to one his novels, Paul Clifford, published in 1830. It begins with the infamous sentence: “It was a dark and stormy night.” In addition to that line, Bulwer-Lytton also coined several memorial phrases: “the pen is mightier than the sword,” “pursuit of the almighty dollar,” and “the great unwashed.”

There is no evidence to suggest that Bulwer-Lytton was actually subconsciously echoing the line from another famous work, The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas published in 1844. One of the final chapters begins with the line “C’etait une nuit orageuse et sombre,” which translated from the French means “It was a night stormy and dark.”

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

The 2024 Eclipse and the Eclipse from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon

Millions of people gathered all around the world to witness a spectacular eclipse. As the moon eclipsed the sun, casting an eerie mid-day darkness on earth, people felt a wave of emotion—a collective euphoria met with howls — and in some cases, tears — of joy. As I watched reports from far-flung locations on the globe, my thoughts turned back to the most famous eclipse in the world of music — Pink Floyd’s magnum opus: The Dark Side of the Moon. I wondered how many people were listening to the song Eclipse, the closing song on the album, as the moon slowly glided over the sun?

The Dark Side of the Moon celebrated its 40th birthday just last year. The album, with its iconic cover artwork (a prism and spectrum of light), is recognized by music critics and fans as one of the greatest albums of all time, having spent over 1,630 weeks — 31 years! — on Billboard’s music charts (The Billboard 200 and Top Pop Catalog Albums Chart). Pink Floyd’s magnum opus is also one of the best-selling albums of all times, with an estimated 50 million copies sold worldwide. Like any great work of art, this legendary concept album is visionary and complex, rich in meaning, full of symbolism and nuances — and it has entertained and perplexed music fans for decades. For many fans, it was an invitation to listen to and enjoy music in a heightened altered state. Music aficionados can vividly recall the first time they heard the album; and most pine for a chance to hear it again for the first time. After four decades, thanks to documentaries, books, and interviews with the band members, fascinating stories and trivia about the album have emerged from the dark, into the light.

So what exactly is the meaning of The Dark Side of the Moon? The theme of The Dark Side of the Moon, originally proposed by bassist and songwriter Roger Waters, was the things that make people insane — that mirrored, on one level, the gradual mental breakdown of Syd Barrett, an early band member. Cliff Jones, a self-confessed “Floydophile” and writer for Rolling Stones explains: “The album’s premise is that modern life is a recipe for insanity, and that a human has to fight hard to escape madness.” Another important theme of the album is the dichotomy of light and dark, good and evil. Phil Rose, a very articulate Floyd expert, explains: “Waters [employs] the sun and moon as symbols throughout [the album].. in his own words, their representation of  ‘the light and the dark; the good and the bad; the life force as opposed to the death force.’” Indeed the album is as ambitious, as it is inventive, in its exploration of the human experience, the circle of life: it begins with birth (the sound of a heartbeat) and moves through anxiety, stress, solitude, withdrawal, agony, death, greed, isolation, depression, free will, madness, ultimately arriving at empathy, understanding, and unity. Who said that progressive rock had to be droll or trifling?

The Dark Side of the Moon was actually written and developed a year prior to being recorded in the studio. Some of the album’s melodies and songs were developed from earlier demos and unreleased material created by Roger Waters, David Gilmour, and Nick Mason. The entire album was first performed in concert on January 20, 1972 under the title of “Dark Side of the Moon: A Piece for Assorted Lunatics” (and for a brief time as “Eclipse”). Over the course of the year, as they performed the album live throughout Europe and North America, they gradually refined each of the songs.

The Dark Side of the Moon was recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London in two separate sessions (May 1972 and January 1973) engineered by Alan Parsons, who had also worked with the Beatles on “Abbey Road” and “Let it Be.” Parsons went on to develop his own successful progressive rock group in 1975, The Alan Parsons Project, releasing 10 albums. Despite many rumors that The Dark Side of the Moon was written as a soundtrack for the film “Wizard of Oz” (claiming 70 to 100 synchronicities between the film and the album, e.g., when Dorothy looks up just as the sound of the helicopter is heard on the song “On the Run”), Parsons stated unequivocally that the film was never discussed during the recording sessions — proof that doing drugs and listening to the album can lead to all sorts of far-fetched ideas and theories.

The iconic album cover was designed by the British design firm Hipgnosis, founded in 1968 by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell. Initially Hipgnosis had designed Pink Floyd’s earlier albums (Atom Heart Mother and Obscured by Clouds); this time around, Richard Wright asked the firm to design something “smarter, neater — more classy” and “simple and bold.” Hipgnosis brought in freelancer George Hardie to work on the project; together, they presented Pink Floyd with seven different design concepts. The prism concept, that was selected by the band, was inspired by a photograph that Thorgerson had seen during the design exploration phase. The prism artwork, created by Hardie, shows six colors of the rainbow, missing the seventh, indigo. In the fascinating DVD documentary, “Classic Albums: The Making of The Dark Side of the Moon” it is revealed that the cover artwork represents three important elements: the album’s lyrics, the band’s stage lighting, and a simple but bold design. Hipgnosis went on to design some of the most recognized album covers in the history of music, including Led Zeppelin, Yes, Paul McCartney & Wings, Alan Parsons Project, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, and ELO. Hipgnosis dissolved in 1983.

The album was released on March 24, 1973, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time; it stayed on Billboard’s Top 200 Album chart for a record-breaking 724 consecutive weeks. In the U.S. it is ranked in the top 25 best-selling albums of all time; in England, it is the 6th best-selling album of all time.

The amazing gospel-inspired vocals on “The Great Gig in the Sky” belong to songwriter and singer Clare Torry who was invited by David Gilmour to come into the studio to improvise a wordless melody for the song. During the 70s, a rumor circulated that the vocals represented a woman’s orgasm — once again creative thinking by the drug-induced stupor of listeners or perhaps sex-deprived teenagers. The title of the song is, in fact, a metaphor for death and the song expresses the horror of death (undoubtedly, a song that Edgar Allan Poe would have greatly appreciated). Rose elaborates: “[The female who represents humanity] erupts into hysterical screaming, but one is led to suspect that this outburst is not outwardly observable. It takes place purely in her psyche, and we are now able to observe the horror that she truly experiences when she conceptualizes her non-existence. This external/internal dichotomy is suggested by the apparently calm and confident statements [that appear before and after] the outburst which is juxtaposed with the unrestrained singing. We are able to view her mental landscape and witness the true torture  with her state of “quiet desperation” or the repression of her fear.” Heavy stuff to ponder; no wonder, so many Pink Floyd fans quickly reached for their bongs…

The final song on the album, “Eclipse,” was added after the band began the tour for Dark Side. In an interview Roger Water explains, “It felt as if the piece needed an ending… In a strange way it re-attaches me to my adolescence, the dreams of youth. The lyric points back to what I was attempting to say at the beginning. It’s a recitation of the ideas that preceded it.” The song’s lyrics are simple, but profound:

All that you touch
And all that you see
All that you taste
All you feel
And all that you love
And all that you hate
All you distrust
All you save
And all that you give
And all that you deal
And all that you buy
Beg, borrow or steal…

And all that is now
And all that is gone
And all that’s to come
And everything under the sun is in tune
But the sun is eclipsed by the moon

In the fascinating tome, Pink Floyd: All the Songs, Jean Michel Guesdon compares “Eclipse” to the Book of Ecclesiastes: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die…” That is to say, the song exposes and denounces the absurdity of life, “given that every human being under the sun is defined one day to die, the futility of life it it really does end with the last breath we take.” Guesdon continues, “The sun could therefore be seen as a metaphor for the nonexistence of a god as the grand orchestrator of the cosmic order. This interpretation is supported by the general lack of hope in the philosophy of the songwriter [Waters]… has invented a form of poetic realism in music. The song ends with the heartbeat that precedes the opening track “Speak to Me” (symbolizing birth or awakening) and a voiceover by Gerry Driscoll: “There is no dark side of the moon, really. As a matter of fact, it’s all dark.” Driscoll’s monologue actually continued, but Water edited out: “And the thing that makes it look alight is the sun.”

For further reading: Which One’s Pink by Phil Rose, Collector’s Guide Publishing (1998)
Another Brick in the Wall: The Stories Behind Every Pink Floyd Song by Cliff Jones, Carlton (1996)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_200
Pink Floyd: All the Songs (The Story Behind Every Track) by Jean-Michel Guesdon and Philippe Margotin
DVD: Classic Albums: The Making of the Dark Side of the Moon directed by Matthew Longfellow (2003)

Every Word Has a Story: E Words

“Back of almost every word in the English language there is a ‘life story’ that will come to the average reader as a fascinating revelation,” wrote the editors of Merriam-Webster in their book titled Picturesque Word Origins (1935). “Our words have come to us from sources and in ways that will prove most surprising to anyone who has not before discovered the delights of tracing words back to their origins, formally known as etymology (from the Greek etymologia, meaning ‘analysis of a word to find its true origin’ derived from etymon meaning ‘true sense, original meaning,’ and the word forming element –logia meaning ‘the study of.’

Let us turn to some of the words that begin with the letter “e” and see if their life stories surprise you.

Enthusiasm: religious frenzy
Greek theos means “god,” entheos or enthous means “having a god within,” “possessed by a god,” “inspired,” and enthousiasmos, “divine possession,” “ecstasy.” The English word enthusiasm first meant “inspiration as if by a divine or superhuman power,” then “exaltation of soul,” “zeal,” “fervor,” and, finally, also the thing that excites zeal or fervor.

Escape: to slip out of one’s cape
The word escape gives us a picture of a prisoner, held by his cape or coat, who suddenly slips out of the garment and flees. The word escape comes from Old (North) French escaper (French echapper), made from a Late Latin phrase ex cappa, “out of one’s cape or cloak.”

Exaggerate: literally, to heap up
When one tells a story with a good bit of exaggeration, he is, in the colloquial phrase, “piling on” which comes very close to translating the word exaggerate. This is derived from Latin exaggerare, “to heap up,” an intensive form of aggerare, “to bring to,” “bring on,” from ad, “to,” and gerere, to “bear,” “bring.” Its first English meaning was also “to heap up,” “to accumulate,” but this sense has disappeared, leaving the figurative one, “to enlarge beyond bounds or truth,” “to overstate.”

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

Read related posts: Words Invented by Dickens
What is the Sword of Damocles?
There’s a Word for That: Esprit de l’escalier
There’s a Word for That: Jouissance
There’s a Word for That: Abibliophobia
There’s a Word for That: Petrichor
There’s a Word for That: Deipnosophist
There’s a Word for That: Pareidolia
There’s a Word for That: Macroverbumsciolist
There’s a Word for That: Ultracrepidarian
There’s a Word for That: Cacology

To learn more about Alexander Atkins Design please visit www.alexatkinsdesign.com

An Eloquent Testimony to the Love of Books and the Joy of Book Collecting

If you walk into any used or antiquarian bookstore and ask to be directed to their books-on-books section and don’t receive a puzzled look, you know you are in the right type of bookstore. Many book lovers and collectors seek out books on books and those that are most coveted and rare can command a very high price. Fortunately, there are hundreds of books on books that are readily accessible and affordable. I encountered one of these, albeit an older one, originally published in the 1971 by Clarkson Potter. The book by British bibliophile Eric Quayle is appropriately titled The Collector’s Book of Books that considers English literature from the perspective of the book collector, educating collectors and would-be collectors what to look for in a book.

It is a rather large book I discovered as I pulled it off the shelf and blew off the blanket of dust that had settled on its head text block, betraying years of what I call bibliohibernation — extended neglect or disuse. I opened the book and began reading the brilliant introduction filled with allusions to the glorious sight and smell of old books. If you are a book lover, Quayle’s eloquent testimony to the love of books and the joy of book collecting will surely resonate with you. The essay has so many great quotable lines; for example, “[Books] have become my faithful and trusted friends and the intimate companions of my everyday life.” Another one is a reference to English poet George Crabbe’s [1754-1832] magnificent poem, “The Library,” published in 1781. Quayle quotes this memorable line: “[Books are] the lasting mansions of the dead.”

As you read this, and you find yourself smiling in recognition, then you are undoubtedly a bibliophile.

From the Introduction to The Collector’s Book of Books by Eric Quayle:

“I am a bibliophile; an otherwise rational member of the community consumed by a love of books. It gives me pleasure to handle any printed work that has something important to say; but most of all I cherish rare editions, finely printed texts, beautifully illustrated books, and volumes scarce and unprocurable except by knowledgeable means. 

The mute but articulate ranks of old leather bindings  and time-mellowed spines, that climb in order of size from floor to ceiling in the study where I am now writing, exude a sense of ageless serenity and unruffled calm. Looking at the close-packed rows of octavos and duodecimos that top the polished oak shelves, the 18th-century quartos in their blind-stamped russia [leather] immediately below them, then down at the ponderous folios, secure behind their bevelled wooden-boards and coats of sprinkled calf, I am reminded of the decades that have merged into centuries since their original owners unpacked the parcels that brought them home. Now they are here with me, collected in years past from the dispersal of libraries that once knew them as freshly printed books, uncut and unopened (and sometimes for generations unread), waiting their first visit to the binder before the family embrace of book-plate and shelf-mark. They have stood unperturbed through war and disaster, peace and calm, quietly awaiting their next reading. A sense of security pervades old books. George Crabbe called them ‘The lasting mansions of the dead’ [a line from the poem “The Library“]. They have become my faithful and trusted friends and the intimate companions of my everyday life. To part with any one of them disturbs me: to lose them all would translate me to a barren existence and a life lacking its chief intellectual comfort and most relaxing pleasure.

Book-collecting absorbs your interest to an extent that relegates many of the other balms of human existence to second place. Before long you find yourself snatching the illicit half-hour from more mundane concerns, business and domestic, to indulge a passion that the uninitiated deride. For the book lover, once he surrenders to the fascination his hobby exerts over him, begins to resent every leisure hour not devoted to its demands. It becomes an affaire de coeur [an affair of the heart] that deepens with each passing year.

The gradual acquisition of a well-chosen library of first and other important editions of English literature, or in the fields of science or the arts, gives a satisfaction that is difficult to equal in any other sphere. The books offered on the shelves and in the catalogues of antiquarian booksellers assume a personality of their own. You begin to look on certain (long-dead) authors as close friends, and on the binding styles of favorite publishing houses with affection. You gradually become the victim of the least vicious of hobbies, and of a pastime that is financially most rewarding.

Book-collecting need not be only a rich man’s diversion, or a lucrative investment for those in the six-figure bracket. Everyone, no matter what his income, can have at least a shelf or two of personal favorites in the style of binding in which their original writers would themselves have handled the volumes they created. Not everyone can afford to possess a fine library of several thousand books, but there are still many authors whose first editions can be picked up for small sums, and many subjects in which the pioneer collector can acquire all the key volumes before his rivals pick up the trail.

There is no quicker way to be transported through time than by a half-remembered scent or odor. I know all my best-loved books by their smell, that exciting aroma of old paper, book-binder’s glue, and printer’s ink. I have only to nose between their leaves for memories to come tumbling back of their discovery in a favorite old bookshop. The attic of a dead uncle, filled with cobwebs, tea-chests, and parcelled three-deckers; a damp cellar in Ireland with Dickens in parts; the red-winery polish of mahogany shelves in a manor-house library that I saved from the auctioneer’s hammer to establish the background to a specialist part of my present collection; the locations of my first meeting with strange books are remembered as soon as I open any one of them. Dozens were purchased with money that should have been thriftily squandered on the mundane necessities of our 20th-century existence. Some had to be smuggled into my study (one particularly bulky consignment even disappearing for a time through a trap-door leet for inspection purposes into the floorboards). But ‘high-spots’ and rare ephemera so lovingly clothed in effusive adjectives in the catalogues they receive. By his discoveries in forgotten or unexplored territory he may add something worth while to our knowledge of the past and by doing so he will also add to the sum total of human research and endeavor.

This is one of the several ways in which the book-collector and/or bibliophile can influence literary taste. His library reflects his own individual personality. What one man will seek avidly in every bookshop in the land, crouching over hastily opened catalogues while his breakfast cools on the plate, will leave another completely unmoved. Show a collector of 18th-century poetry an almost complete set of the first editions of Charles Dickens in the original cloth, or Ernest Hemingway, or W. H. Ainsworth, or Benjamin Franklin, or any literary figure, great or small, whose work lies outside the magic and esoteric circle of poets from the reign of Queen Anne (give or take a few years) to that of the turn of the century, and he will have difficulty in evincing any but polite interest. It is rather like displaying to a collector of early motoring books a library devoted solely to the works of the restoration dramatists.

This is one of the many aspects that have attracted me to the hobby of book-collecting: the field is so wide and there are so many facets to examine and by-ways to explore that you never have a chance to lose interest. As one door closes another opens. When an author you have been quietly collecting for many years is re-discovered by the critics, you can sit back and relax, fighting any tendency to say ‘I told you so!’ Your perception will pay handsome financial dividends as your fellow bibliophiles seek out what you left and then pester you for crumbs. But once your one-time favorite is promoted to a literary high-spot, with all that means in hard cash, then it is time to move on. Either by collecting in a later century — as I did with early children’s books when the Georgian era was priced out of my market — or by seeking another unknown name of intrinsic worth…

Good books are pleasurable things, whatever they cost. But much of the enjoyment in book-collecting is derived from steering one’s own course. For then you pit your taste and knowledge against the rest of the world, and your library will mirror your own identity, not that of the professional bookseller who made it for you.”

If you enjoyed reading this essay, please share it with a book lover you know. Quayle’s message should reach a wider audience.

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

Read related posts: Words Invented by Book Lovers
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To learn more about Alexander Atkins Design please visit www.alexatkinsdesign.com

Little Books, Big Ideas: Ancient Wisdom, Timeless Truths

If you visit a used bookstore, you might stumble upon an often neglected section: miniature or compact books. A miniature book generally measures 3 by 4 inches; some are even smaller: 1.5 inches by 2 inches. A compact book, also known as an octodecimo in American Library Association lingo, generally measures 4 x 6 inches. Unfortunately, these types of books are often dismissed due to their small size. “If they are so small, how can they possibly matter?” you think to yourself. Astute book lovers, however, know that even little books can contain big ideas — profound thoughts that can change your life.

In my periodic visits to used bookstores, I recently came across such a thought-provoking little book: Ancient Wisdom, Timeless Truths: Immortal Philisophers Discuss the Meaning of Life edited by Jude Patterson, published in 2003.

In the introduction of Ancient Wisdom, Timeless Truths, the author writes: “The philosophers and historians of Ancient Greece, Rome, and China shared one common aim: the search for truth… [Their] writings explored the universal themes of life and death, war and peace, the individual and the state, fortune and opportunity, and above all vice and virtue — a code of ethics to guide them in obtaining wisdom and happiness. Then, as now, truth can be found in antiquity — in the wisdom handed down from generation to generation. ” Here are some of the pearls of wisdom from the ancient philosophers:

Socrates: There is only one good, that is knowledge; and there is only one evil, that is ignorance.

Lao-Tzu: The virtuous man promotes agreement; the vicious man allots the blame.

Demosthenes: There is nothing, absolutely nothing, which needs to be more carefully guarded against than that one man should be allowed to become more powerful than the people.”

Chuang-Tzu: Great wisdom is generous, petty wisdom contentious. Greet speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.

Marcus Aurelius: Let every action aim solely at the common good.

Plato: Of all the things of a man’s soul which he has within him, justice is the greatest good and injustice the greatest evil.

Aristotle: The best political community is formed by the citizens of the middle class.

Cicero: There is nothing so characteristic of narrowness and littleness of soul as the love of riches.

Socrates: The unexamined life is not worth living.

Aristotle: What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

Virgil: I have known sorrow and learned to aid the wretched.

Aesop: no act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

Lucretius: If a man would guide his life by true philosophy, he will find ample riches in a modest livelihood enjoyed with a tranquil mind.

Pliny the Younger: A noble spirit will seek the reward of virtue in consciousness of it, rather than in popular opinion.

Plautus: Patience is the best remedy for every trouble.

Confucius: By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.

Publilius Syrus: It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity.

Seneca: Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.

Ovid: Everything flows onward; all things are brought into being with a changing nature; the ages themselves glide by in constant movement.

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

Read related posts: Little Books, Big Ideas: On Things That Really Matter
The Wisdom of a Grandmother
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The Wisdom of Yoda
The Wisdom of George Carlin
The Wisdom of Saint-Exupery
The Wisdom of Steven Wright
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To learn more about Alexander Atkins Design please visit www.alexatkinsdesign.com

Cashtration, Decafelon, Giraffiti, and Other Neologisms

Sadly, for dictionary publishers, there is no such thing as an up-to-date dictionary, especially in the Google era. As soon as a dictionary is published, in just one day, several neologisms (new words) have been coined. According to the Global Language Monitor, a new word is created every 98 minutes — adding about 1,000 words per year to the English lexicon. However, not all neologisms make it into a dictionary because they have limited use or have been coined simply for fun. Because the English language is so vast and  adaptable, it is a wellspring for inventive games.

Many years ago, The Washington Post reached out to its astute readers and asked them to take an existing word, alter it by one letter, and provide a definition for that new word. Here were some of the most clever neologisms that were submitted:

Arachnoleptic fit: The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.

Beelzebug: Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

Bozone: The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

Cashtration: The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

Caterpallor: The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you’re eating.

Decafalon: The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

Glibido: All talk and no action.

Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole

Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

Karmageddon: When everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes and the Earth explodes and it’s a serious bummer.

Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease.

Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

In a variation of this wordplay, The Washington Post asked readers to take an existing commonly-used word and provide an alternate definition. Perhaps we can coin a new word here — a neodefinition: a new alternate definition for a word. Here are some of the best neodefinitions:

Abdicate: to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

Balderdash: a rapidly receding hairline.

Circumvent: an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

Coffee: the person upon whom one coughs.

Esplanade: to attempt an explanation while drunk.

Flabbergasted: appalled over how much weight you have gained.

Flatulence: emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

Gargoyle: olive-flavored mouthwash.

Lymph: to walk with a lisp.

Negligent: describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.

Oyster: a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

Pokemon: a Rastafarian proctologist.

Rectitude: the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

Testicle: a humorous question on an exam.

Willy-nilly: impotent.

What neologisms can you add to either of these lists?

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

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There’s a Word for That: Petrichor
There’s a Word for That: Deipnosophist
There’s a Word for That: Pareidolia
There’s a Word for That: Macroverbumsciolist
There’s a Word for That: Ultracrepidarian
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To learn more about Alexander Atkins Design please visit www.alexatkinsdesign.com

How an Abandoned Box of Watches Changed Retail History and Men’s Fortunes

“Most people are of the opinion that because a man has made a fortune that his opinions on any subject are valuable. For my part, I always believe most large fortunes are made by men of mediocre ability who tumbled into a lucky opportunity and couldn’t help but get rich and that others, given the same chance, would have done far better with it.” — Julius Rosenwald

Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932), was a Jewish American businessman and philanthropist. He and his brother established the Rosenwald and Weil Clothiers in Chicago in the early 1880s. But his lucky opportunity came along in 1903 when he became part owner of Sears Roebuck & Company. To see how this happened, let us set the stage for this serendipitous event.

Richard Sears was born in 1863 in Stewartville, Minnesota. His father was a blacksmith and the family always struggled financially. As a young boy, Sears had to work to help support the family. By the age of 16, Sears had taught himself Morse code and began working as a telegraph operator for the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway. Eventually he assigned as the station agent at the North Redwood Falls train station. One day, in 1886 Sears (then 23), had to deal with a box full of gold watches that were delivered to a local jewelry store “cash on delivery.” However, the jewelry store refused the shipment so Sears contacted the manufacturer in Chicago. Eager to get rid of the inventory, the watch company sold the abandoned box to Sears at a great discount. That day, a company was born: R. W. Sears Watch Company. Sears realized there was a great opportunity in selling watches. The tremendous growth of railways, the advent of time zones, and development of train schedules created a huge demand for pocket and wrist watches to keep track of time. Sears had great success selling watches and moved the company to Chicago. At that time, Chicago was growing rapidly and as one of the main railway hubs in America, drew many manufacturers and businesses.

In order to increase sales, Sears wrote very clever ads with bold and outlandish claims to entice shoppers. He also offered a six-year guarantee for his watches. However, this created a problem, because replacing watches was expensive. So in 1887, Sears hired a watch repairman named Alvah Roebuck. Although the company was successful, Sears was burned out from long hours of work. At the age of 25, he sold the business for $72,000 (about $2 million in today’s dollars). He returned to the business in 1891 and together with Roebuck, formed a new mail order catalog business named Sears, Roebuck & Company. The first Sears catalog was published in 1893 (titled “Cheapest Supply House on Earth: Our Trade Reaches Around the World”) featuring low-priced merchandise focusing on rural markets, while well-established competitor Montgomery Ward focused on higher quality goods for urban markets. In 1895, cash began to dry up and the company was sliding toward financial disaster. Roebuck, who was not a risk-taker, decided to sell his half of the company for $25,000. Meanwhile, Sears was being flooded with orders for low-priced suits. One of his suppliers was a clothier owned by Aaron Nusfaum and Julius Rosenwald. Because Sears was already in debt with their company, Nusfaum and Rosenwald traded that debt for half of the company. They weren’t interested in changing the company’s name since it had already been established; moreover, they feared antisemitism would negatively impact sales.

While Sears focused on sales, Rosenwald focused on administration, infrastructure, and better fiscal management. By 1906, both Montgomery Ward and Sears built massive fulfillment centers in Chicago. Occupying several acres, they were designed for maximum efficiency and took advantage of the U.S. postal service and railway hubs. These were the precursors of the modern day fulfillment warehouses that Amazon utilizes. The centers also included gyms, medical clinics, educational centers, and gardens for the employees to use. In 1908, Sears retired from the company at the age of 45 with a net worth of more than half a billion in today’s dollars. In his words, “[I] earned for me something besides money, namely, a little relaxation and a little time for my family.” [Sears died six years later at the age of 50].

Rosenwald assumed the helm of the company. During the next 30 years, Rosenwald overhauled and led the company to tremendous success, surpassing the sales of Montgomery Ward. This success also fostered the opportunity for Rosenwald’s other passion: philanthropy. He explained, “What I want to do is try to cure the things that seem wrong.” Over the years, Rosenwald pursued philanthropic efforts to improve education, provide housing, and reduce social inequity and prejudice. Even more remarkably, he did it with great humility, never wanting a building to be named after him or being listed as a sole donor.

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

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What is the Origin of “Bells and Whistles”?

One of the most common descriptions that a reader encounters when comparing features between products is bells and whistles. In general, products without the bells and whistles cost less than those that include them. Although the term bells and whistles can cover a wide range of specific features, the general meaning of the idiom is well understood by the modern consumer: features, often fancy or frilly, that are added to make a product more attractive to buyers; however, these features are not essential to the product’s basic function. Interestingly, this idiom is often used to describe high tech products (e.g., “large high-definition LED TV with all the bells and whistles” and “latest lap-top with all the bells and whistles”). It sounds a bit anachronistic, don’t you think? Why would someone want bells and whistles (low tech) on a high-tech product? Naturally, this question invites the more obvious question: why do we say “bells and whistles”?

Like many idioms, bells and whistles provides a snapshot of history, in this case, European history. Let’s step into a time machine and set the destination to the late 1700s to arrive in London, England, where we’ll meet two men who share the title “Father of the Modern Circus”: Philip Astley (1742–1814) and Charles Dibdin (1745–1814). Dibdin actually coined the word “circus,” from the Latin circus, via the Greek kirkos, meaning “a circle or a ring.” The Romans used the term to refer to enclosures without roofs that were used for races and performances. Both Astley and Dibdin built very popular shows around elaborate equestrian demonstrations and performances, eventually adding other forms of entertainment. His inexpensive performances drew huge crowds, and by the mid 1800s, there were hundreds of circuses in England. The development of the railroad allowed large circuses to travel further and reach the remotest towns, and the traveling circus (or the “traveling carnival”) was introduced in the late 1830s. By the end of the century, British and American circuses, carnivals, and fairs were touring across Europe and the United States. Circus and fair owners began expanding their entertainment and added games of skill and chance (like ring toss, dart games, and shooting galleries), rides, food concessions, dance shows, theatrical performances, and exotic attractions (e.g., human oddities, taming ferocious beasts, etc.).

And what is a carnival or fair without music? Since carnivals are loud and busy places, carnival owners wanted a dependable source of merry music that didn’t require a lot of workers (i.e., musicians) and was easy to transport from city to city. Enter the Gavioli family of Cavezzo, Italy. Giacomo, and his son Ludovico, and his three sons (Anselme, Henry, and Claude) formed Gavioli & Cie in Paris, France in 1858 to design and manufacture the most beautiful and sophisticated fairground organs in Europe.

The Gaviolis designed a complete band inside a massive wooden enclosure (ranging in size from a modern day van to a tour bus) including every type of band instrument — violin, cello, pipe, organ, Glockenspiel, xylophone, drum, cymbal, trumpet, bell, whistle, etc—to mimic the music played by a band or small orchestra. (Thus, in America, these were known as band organs.) What is truly amazing is that every instrument is played by a brief blast of forced air and the interplay of very intricate mechanics.

Not only did Gavioli organs sound beautiful, they were beautiful to behold. Many of the organ facades featured colorful, intricately sculpted figures, like a music conductor, whose arm movement was timed to music, or a musician whose arm would strike a bell or drum at the appropriate time.

The music that a fairground organ played was contained in a thick cardboard book, stored in a zig-zag format, that would be fed through a metal cylinder that would detect holes in the cardboard. The metal bars in the cylinder would then detect a hole that allowed the corresponding valves to send compressed air through many feet of flexible hose to play the different instruments. Although the Gaviolis did not develop punch cards, they built on the concept developed by Basile Bouchon (1725) and Joseph Jacquard (1804). These punched musical books, however, could be considered a crude precursor of the punch cards that early tabulating machines would use in the 1930s and electronic computers would use in the 1950s (also known as IBM or Hollerith cards).

In short, a Gavioli fairground organ was a stunning masterpiece of innovation, craftsmanship, and mechanical and musical engineering contained in a beautiful ornate wooden assembly. Occasionally, these organs come up for auction. Recently, a completely restored 110-key organ sold for almost half a million dollars at Sothebys. Watch a fascinating video about the mechanics of a Gavioli fairground organ and how it plays a song here.

When we examine the English corpus, we learn that the idiom “bells and whistles” began with one definition (literal) around the mid-1800s, and then about a century later, in the early 1950s, evolved to a slightly different meaning (figurative). The earlier, literal definition of bells and whistles is: the features of a product that are required and necessary for a product’s basic function. The later, figurative definition is: attractive or frilly features that are not essential to a product’s basic function. Although dictionaries vary slightly in the definitions they present, there is a consensus that the original idiom is an allusion to the fairground organ that could be ordered with elaborate ornamentation and full range of instruments — in short, all the bells and whistles.

Let’s review some of the definitions of “bells and whistles” in authoritative reference works. We begin by looking at Allen’s English Phrases (2006): “details; extra features that are attractive but not particularly useful. The phrase is applied typically to machines and gadgets (and originally, in a more literal sense, to fairground organs), and is also used figuratively. (Late 20th century).” The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms (2nd Edition, 2004) states: “attractive additional features or trimmings. The bells and whistles originally referred to were those found on old fairground organs. Nowadays, the phrase is often used in computing jargon to mean ‘attractive but superfluous facilities.’” Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (20th edition, 2018) explains: “Additional attractive features, gimmicks or ‘gizmos.’ The allusion is to a fairground organ with its multiplicity of bells and whistles.”

The Oxford English Dictionary notes that the earliest modern idiomatic use was in Byte Magazine in 1977, while Merriam Webster cites 1968. However, a search in Google Books found several earlier relevant references:

“But it isn’t long before your programers come to you and say they need a bigger, faster, more powerful machine. If they are persuasive, you then try to convince your boss of the supposed need for this new device with all its bells and whistles.” (Perspectives in Defense Management, 1967, page 32)

Computers are not simple, self-contained mechanisms. Many have a variety of attachments and peripheral gear nicknamed the ‘bells and whistles.’ Each of these is designed to give the computer particular characteristics and advantages.” (Proceedings: Annual Conference on Automation and Personnel Administration, 1962, page 24)

“…One of our out-of-town clients had an IBM 650 on order with all the bells and whistles. They had to wait a year for delivery, and they wanted to get into immediate action.” (Proceedings of the Automation Conference, 1956, page 36)

Special thanks to Natalie for suggesting the idea for this post.

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

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To learn more about Alexander Atkins Design please visit www.alexatkinsdesign.com

Every Word Was Once a Poem… Language is Fossil Poetry

“Every word was once a poem…. The poets made all the words, and therefore language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses. For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry.”

From the essay “The Poet” published in 1844 by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). Emerson is one of the most quoted American writers — and for good reason. “If Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and Franklin are our Founding Fathers, Ralph Waldo Emerson is our Founding Thinker,” writes Emerson scholar Richard Geldard. “Born in 1803 in Boston, Emerson became in his lifetime America’s seer and prophet. His collected works, including poems, essays, and extensive journals not only inspired such notable figures as Henry David Thoreau, William James, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and numerous nineteenth and twentieth century poets, painters, and musicians, but also a wide readership of ordinary Americans who found in Emerson a teacher of profound depth and idealism… Emerson  was the conscience of his nation and a man of great moral courage.”

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

Word of the Year 2023

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language,” wrote the poet T. S. Eliot, “and next year’s words await another voice.” To that observation, we can add: this past year’s words also define the language, the conversations, or more accurately, the zeitgeist of the year. Editors of dictionaries take one of two approaches to determine the word of the year: ethos or data. If ethos driven, the word of the year is a word or expression reflecting the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the past twelve months, one that has potential as a term of lasting cultural significance. If data driven, the word of the year is selected based on the highest number of dictionary lookups (including spikes) over the course of the year.

To determine the 2023 word of the year, the editors of the revered Oxford Dictionaries presented the public a list of words (in matchups, e.g., parasocial vs situationship) that had surged in popularity during the course of the year. Once the public (32,000 people voted) had narrowed down the list, the editors selected the word of the year. The editors chose “rizz” (a shortened form of “charisma”) as the word of the year for 2023. Rizz is defined as “style, charm, or attractiveness; or the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner.” As a verb “rizz” (eg, “to rizz up”) means to attract or seduce a person. What is unique about this word formation is that the term comes from the middle part of the word. Only a few other words follow this pattern (e.g., fridge from refrigerator; flu from influenza).

The word comes from the gaming and internet culture. It was popularized by Kai Cenat, a YouTube and Twitch streamer, in 2021. In June 2023, it was further popularized by Tom Holland, an English actor, during an interview with Buzzfeed, titled “How to develop fizz according to Tom Holland.”

Finalists included: prompt (An instruction given to an artificial intelligence program, algorithm, etc., which determines or influences the content it generates.); situationship (A romantic or sexual relationship that is not considered to be formal or established.); Swiftie (An enthusiastic fan of the singer Taylor Swift.). Runner-ups included: beige flag (a character trait that indicates that a partner or potential partner is boring or lacks originality); de-influencing (the practice of discouraging consumers from buying specific products, or encouraging them to reduce their consumption of material goods); heat dome (a persistent, high-pressure weather system over a particular geographic area, which traps a mass of hot air below it); parasocial (designating a relationship characterized by the one-sided relationship between a fan and a celebrity, in which the fan feels like they know the celebrity as a friend); Swiftie (a fan of Taylor Swift).

Meanwhile, the editors of Merriam-Webster selected the word “authentic” as its 2023 Word of the Year. Authentic seems like it should have one, simple meaning. The editors explain, “Authentic has a number of meanings including ‘not false or imitation,’ a synonym of real and actual; and also ‘true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character.’ Although clearly a desirable quality, authentic is hard to define and subject to debate—two reasons it sends many people to the dictionary. Authentic is often connected to identity, whether national or personal: words frequently modified by authentic include cuisine and dish, but also self and voice… And with the rise of artificial intelligence—and its impact on deepfake videos, actors’ contracts, academic honesty, and a vast number of other topics—the line between “real” and “fake” has become increasingly blurred. Authentic is what brands, social media influencers, and celebrities aspire to be.” Other candidates for word of the year included: rizz, deepfake, coronation, dystopian, EGOT, X, implode, doppelgänger, covenant, indict, elemental, kibbutz, and deadname.

For 2023 Word of the Year, the editors of Dictionary.com selected “hallucinate,” defined as “[verb] (of artificial intelligence) to produce false information contrary to the intent of the user and present it as if true and factual.” Grant Barrett, head of lexicography, stated, “Hallucinate as our 2023 Word of the Year encapsulates technology’s continuing impact on social change, and the continued discrepancy between the perfect future we envision and the messy one we actually achieve.” The editors note how AI has had a tremendous impact on the world; they elaborate: “The sudden arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT late last year stunned not only its tech rivals but just about everyone who tried it. Chatbot capabilities have forced educators to grapple with what it means to teach and learn in a world where essays can write themselves — often with perfect grammar but sometimes, as we all quickly learned, far-from-perfect facts. Now, AI-generated writing and its errors — often called hallucinations — have begun to reach beyond the margins of student writing, leaking into news feeds, search engine results, and even court cases… Hallucinate is particularly notable among the terms that AI has popularized because it refers not to an aspect of how AI functions but to one of the ways it can malfunction. In this way, it’s akin to other cautionary tech terms, like spam and virus, that are now entrenched in our language.” Runners up included: strike, rizz, wokeism, indicted, and wildfire.

Collins Dictionary, published in Glasgow, Scotland, selected “AI” as its 2023 Word of the Year. AI is defined as “an abbreviation for articial intelligence: a type of computer technology which is concerned with making machines work in an intelligent way, similar to the way that the human mind works.”  The editors of Collins Dictionary note, “The revolutionary AI-powered language model burst into the public consciousness in late 2022, wowing us with its ability to mimic natural human speech. It could do much more than that, actually – need copy for a presentation tomorrow morning? No problem. A recipe for dinner using only what you’ve got left in the cupboard? Done. And while people were understandably fascinated, they also started to get a bit anxious. If computers were suddenly experts in that most human of domains, language, what next?” Runners us include: baseball, canon event, debanking, deinfluencing, semaglutide, greedflation, nepo baby, and ultra-processed.  

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

Read related posts:
Word of the Year 2021
Word of the Year 2020
Word of the Year 2019
Word of the Year 2018
Word of the Year 2017
Word of the Year 2016
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How Many Words in the English Language?

For further reading:

Word of the Year 2023

https://www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-the-year/
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-of-the-year

To learn more about Alexander Atkins Design please visit www.alexatkinsdesign.com

 

The Atkins Bookshelf Literary Christmas Price Index: 2023

Back in 1984, the PNC Bank (a bank based in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania) developed the Christmas Price Index that totals the cost of all the gifts mentioned in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” as a flippant economic indicator. In 1984, the Christmas Price Index was $12,623.10; more than three decades later, in 2023, it reached $46,729.86 — an increase of $4,317.69 (2.7%) from 2022 (CPI was $45,523.27). In 2023, the most expensive gift is the ten lords-a-leaping that costs $14,539. On the other hand, the cheapest gift is the eight maids-a-milking that costs $58 (due to the low federal minimum wage).

Despite their symbolism, the twelve gifts of Christmas are not only extremely random, they are more of a nuisance than carefully-selected gifts that you would actually cherish. As if the holidays are not stressful enough, imagine all those animals running and flying about helter-skelter, defecating all over your clean carpets — not to mention the nonstop, grating sound of drummers drumming and pipers piping pushing you toward the brink of a mental breakdown. Truly, no book lover would be happy with these gifts. Bah humbug! Therefore, I introduced the Atkins Bookshelf Literary Christmas Price Index in 2014 that would be far more interesting and appreciated by bibliophiles. The Atkins Bookshelf Literary Christmas Price Index replaces all those unwanted mess-making animals and clamorous performers with first editions of cherished classic Christmas books. The cost of current first editions are determined by the latest data available from Abe Books, the leading online antiquarian bookseller.

For 2023, the Atkins Bookshelf Literary Christmas Price Index is $130,810 (shipping and tax are not included), a decrease of $19,675 (about 13%) from last year ($150,485). The biggest hit to your wallet remains — by a very large margin, Charles Dickens’ very coveted and valuable first edition of one of the most well-known literary classics, A Christmas Carol valued at $75,000 (a price unchanged from last year) — a valuation that would be sure to warm Scrooge’s heart. Another expensive Christmas book is Clement C. Moore’s classic poem, “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (more commonly known at “The Night Before Christmas”) that has largely influenced how Santa Claus is depicted. The poem was included in a collection of Moore’s poems in 1844, a year after the publication of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In 2023, the book is valued at $11,120 ( a decrease of $3,880 from last year). The largest increase is for the book that inspired the classic holiday film “It’s A Wonderful Life” — Philip Van Doren Stern’s The Greatest Gift: A Christmas Tale. It had a dramatic increase of $15,150 (505%), from $3,000 last year to $18,150. Last year’s price was for a first trade edition; this year’s price is for a rare first edition privately printed for the author (1 of 200 sent out as a Christmas card), inscribed by the author. Below are the individual costs of the books that make up the Atkins Bookshelf Literary Christmas Price Index.

A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens: $75,000

A Visit from St. Nicholas (included in Poems, 1844) by Clement C. Moore: $11,120

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957) by Dr. Seuss: $4,500

A Christmas Memory (1966) by Truman Capote: $9,000

The Polar Express (1985) by Chris Van Allsburg: $2,250

The Nutcracker (1984 edition) by E. T. A. Hoffman: $1,250

Miracle on 34th Street (1947) by Valentine Davies: $1,500

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902) by L. Frank Baum: $5,887

The Greatest Gift: A Christmas Tale (1944) by Philip Van Doren Stern: $18,150

In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash (A Christmas Story) by Jean Shepherd: $360

Old Christmas: from the Sketchbook of Washington Irving (1876) by Washington Irving: $543

The Gift of the Magi (included in The Four Million, 1906) by O. Henry: $1,250

Happy Holidays!

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

Read related posts: The Origin of the Name Scrooge
The Inspiration for Dickens’s A Christmas Carol
What is a First Edition of A Christmas Carol Worth?
The Story Behind “The Night Before Christmas”
Words invented by Dickens
Why Read Dickens?

For further reading: https://www.pnc.com/en/about-pnc/topics/pnc-christmas-price-index.html

To learn more about Alexander Atkins Design please visit www.alexatkinsdesign.com

How a Famous Christmas Song Connects Johnny Cash, Helen Steiner Rice, Leo Tolstoy, and the Bible

“The Christmas Guest” is a touching holiday song about Conrad, a humble shopkeeper whose acts of kindness highlight the importance of compassion and generosity. The song begins with Conrad relating to neighbors that Jesus came to him in a dream, saying that he would visit Conrad. It is implied that Conrad has recently faced some difficulty in his life — “his shop so meager and mean.” Throughout the day, three different people in need (a shabby beggar, an old woman, and a lost child) stumble upon his shop. Each time, Conrad invites them in and provides them with clothing, food, rest, and comfort. But as the day ends, and darkness comes over the village, Conrad laments why Christ has not visited as he promised; in prayer he asks: “What kept You from coming to call on me / For I wanted so much Your face to see.” Out of the silence comes a voice: “Lift up your head, for I kept My word / Three times My shadow crossed your floor / Three times I came to your lonely door / For I was the beggar with bruised, cold feet, / I was the woman you gave to eat, / And I was the child on the homeless street. / Three times I knocked and three times I came in, / And each time I found the warmth of a friend.” Jesus concludes: “Of all the gifts, love is the best, / And I was honored to be your Christmas Guest.”

The song has been covered by Johnny Cash (released in 1980), Reba McEntire (1987), and Grandpa Jones (2003), an old time country and gospel music singer. As you listen to its beautiful lyrics, you may wonder: who wrote “The Christmas Guest”? Excellent question. Let’s step back in time to arrive at the answer.

First, we need to go back 25 years to the year 1991. The song “The Christmas Guest” is a musical adaptation of the poem “The Story of the Christmas Guest” by American poet Helen Steiner Rice, who wrote religious and inspirational poetry, earning the unofficial title of “America’s beloved inspirational poet laureate.” The poem, inspired by the short story of a famous author, was included in Christmas Blessings, a collection of poems published in 1991.

Now we need to go back in time over a century to the late 1800s. Rice was inspired by Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s (1828-1910) masterful short story, “Where Love Is, God Is” (also translated as “Where Love Is, There God Is Also” or “Martin the Cobbler”) written in 1885. In Tolstoy’s story, the cobbler is named Martin (or Martuin) Avdeitch. The title of Tolstoy’s story is based on the Catholic hymn Ubi Caritas that contains the antiphonal response “Ubi caritas est vera, Deus ibis est,” which translated from Latin means “Where true charity is, there is God.” Tolstoy’s story was translated from Russian to English by American writer and translator Nathan Haskell Dole in 1887.

Tolstoy, in turn, was inspired by the French folk tale “Le Pere Martin” (“Father Martin” in English) written by Ruben Saillens (1855-1942), a musician and pastor, considered one of the most influential Evangelical Protestants in France. Saillens sought to evangelize through his hymns and fables. The story “Le Pere Martin” is included in a collection of fables and allegories, titled Rectis et Allegories, published in 1888; however, it must have been written earlier and spread via oral tradition (pastors often repeated each others sermons), which is how Tolstoy must have heard it years earlier. However, Tolstoy does not merely translate Saillens’ story from French to Russian, he changes the story in significant ways in order to make it more poetic and compelling. Brigitte Hanhart retold the story in a children’s book titled Shoemaker Martin published in 1997.

At this point in our story, we must now go back thousands of years because Saillens’ allegory of the shoemaker was inspired by one of civilization’s oldest books — the Bible, specifically the New Testament. Let us turn to Matthew’s gospel, written about 70 A.D., specifically to Chapter 25 (Matthew 25:31-46) where Jesus discusses who will enter the Kingdom of Heaven using the Parable of the Judgment (or the Parable of the Sheep and Goats): “Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

May the Story of the Christmas Guest inspire compassion and generosity during this holiday season and beyond. Merry Christmas — and may God bless us, every one!

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For further reading: Why are Red and Green Associated with Christmas?
Who Invented the First Christmas Card?
Yes, Virginia There is a Santa Claus
Twas the Night Before Christmas
A Christmas Carol and It’s A Wonderful Life
Best Quotes from A Christmas Story
The Inspiration for Dickens’s A Christmas Carol
The Story Behind Scrooge
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation Trivia
Mall Santas by the Numbers
The Atkins Bookshelf Literary Price Index: 2016

For further reading: O Christmas Three: Beloved Christmas Classics by O. Henry, Tolstoy, and Dickens (2010)
http://flyanglersonline.com/lighterside/poetscreek/part152.php
http://classiclit.about.com/od/christmasstoriesholiday/a/aa_papachr.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Love_Is,_God_Is
https://archive.org/details/whereloveisther00dolegoog
http://rereadinglives.blogspot.com/2011/12/papa-panovs-specithal-christmas-by-leo.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruben_Saillens
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Matthew-Chapter-25/
http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=8427

Reflections on Love by Rilke on His Birthday

December 4 marks the birthday of Austrian poet and writer Rainer Maria Rilke (Dec. 4, 1875 – Dec 29, 1926, born René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke). His name is often mispronounced. The correction pronunciation is “RAY ner” “mr EE uh” “REEL kuh.” Rilke changed his first name from René to Rainer to make it more masculine. His mother, who had lost a baby daughter, compensated by naming Rilke with a girl’s name (Maria) and dressed him in girl’s clothing until the age of fine. Although Rilke’s mother made his childhood miserable, she did encourage him to read and write poetry. At an early age he was reciting Friedrich von Schiller’s poems. Between 1894 and 1922, Rilke wrote over ten volumes of poetry that are highly regarded by literary critics. He was also a prolific letter writer, which leads us to the year 1902, when Rilke was 27 years old.

In 1902 Franz Kappus, a 19-year-old aspiring poet, mailed some poems to Rilke, who was a complete stranger to him, hoping that Rilke would critique his work. Rather than critiquing the young man’s poems, Rilke proceeded to write some of the most famous and cherished letters in literary history. In ten short letters, written during a period of 6 years (1902-1908), Rilke bared his soul and shared profound insights about creativity, solitude, reflection, relationships, sexuality, the soul, love, and life. The book is an absolute masterpiece. Each letter deeply touches the reader’s soul; after reading a letter, one is left with the impression of having had a deep conversation with a caring friend or mentor.

Like any great literary work, the author’s wisdom is reaped from the seeds of life experience that have landed on fertile soil and barren rock. “Do not assume that he who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good,” explains Rilke in an early letter. “His life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, he would never have been able to find these words.” Indeed these eloquent words, so full of insight and compassion (not to mention, kindness to a stranger), are timeless — connecting with and inspiring new generations of readers.

Kappus published the ten letters in 1929, three years after Rilke died, in a short book titled, “Letters to a Young Poet.” In the book’s introduction, Kappus shares the details of his correspondence with Rilke. Kappus understood that he was simply the steward for these letters — the letters really belong to the world. “Important alone are the ten letters… important also for the many who are growing and evolving now and shall in the future. When a truly great and unique spirit speaks, the lesser ones must be silent.” We are indebted to Kappus generous and beautiful gift to the world (particularly in a modern world where correspondence has been reduced to frivolous textese banter); but now, we must be humbly silent and allow Rilke’s inspirational words to soar:

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

“Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other. ”

“Love is something difficult and it is more difficult than other things because in other conflicts nature herself enjoins men to collect themselves, to take themselves firmly in the hand with all their strength, while in the heightening of love the impulse is to give oneself wholly away.”

“To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”

“Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over and uniting with another… it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become world, to become world for himself for another’s sake. It is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.”

“Only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn’t exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.”

“Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”

“A person isn’t who they are during the last conversation you had with them — they’re who they’ve been throughout your whole relationship.”

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

“No one can advise or help you — no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”

“Most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth.”

“If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.”

“No experience has been too unimportant, and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand and laid alongside another thread and is held and supported by a hundred others.”

“If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling… in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.”

“Love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away… and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast…. be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind.”

“The necessary thing is after all but this; solitude, great inner solitude. Going into oneself for hours meeting no one – this one must be able to attain.”

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change.”

“Don’t be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame… at your past, which naturally has a share with everything that now meets you.”

“Sex is difficult; yes. But those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious. If you just recognize this and manage, out of yourself, out of your own talent and nature, out of your own experience and childhood and strength, to achieve a wholly individual relation to sex (one that is not influenced by convention and custom), then you will no longer have to be afraid of losing yourself and becoming unworthy of your dearest possession.”

“Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.”

“Perhaps the great renewal of the world will consist of this, that man and woman, freed of all confused feelings and desires, shall no longer seek each other as opposites, but simply as members of a family and neighbors, and will unite as human beings, in order to simply, earnestly, patiently, and jointly bear the heavy responsibility of sexuality that has been entrusted to them.”

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

For further reading: Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke Translated by Joan Burnham, New World Library (1992). There is also a translation by Stephen Mitchell (Modern Library, 2001) and Mark Harman (Harvard Press, 2011).
Life of a Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke by Ralph Freedman, FSG (1996).

People’s Opinions Make Them Comfortable, Truth is a Secondary Consideration

“If you wish to become a philosopher, the first thing to realize is that most people go through life with a whole world of beliefs that have no sort of rational justification, and that one man’s world of beliefs is apt to be incompatible with another man’s, so that they cannot both be right. People’s opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people, is a secondary consideration.”

From The Art of Philosophizing and other Essays (1942) by British mathematician, philosopher, public intellectual, and humanitarian Bertrand Russell (1872-1970. Russell is best known for his seminal work Principia Mathematica that attempted to reduce all of mathematics to logic. He wrote extensively — more than 60 books and 2,000 articles — on many topics, influencing not only mathematics, but a variety of fields: philosophy, linguistics, epistemology, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, education, and politics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1950 in recognition of “his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.”

Russell believed that confession of doubt was the beginning of philosophy. In a lecture titled “Free Thought and Official Propaganda” (1922), Russell argued that all human knowledge did not represent the absolute truth, leaving room for doubt. He wrote: “None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error. The methods of increasing the degree of truth in our beliefs are well known; they consist in hearing all sides, trying to ascertain all the relevant facts, controlling our own bias by discussion with people who have the opposite bias, and cultivating a readiness to discard any hypothesis which has proved inadequate. These methods are practiced in science, and have built up the body of scientific knowledge. Every man of science whose outlook is truly scientific is ready to admit that what passes for scientific knowledge at the moment is sure to require correction with the progress of discovery; nevertheless, it is near enough to the truth to serve for most practical purposes, though not for all. In science, where alone something approximating to genuine knowledge is to be found, men’s attitude is tentative and full of doubt.”

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

Fast Facts About Shakespeare’s First Folio

November 8, 2023 marks the 400th anniversary of one of the most famous books in English literature: the publication of William Shakespeare’s First Folio  in 1623 that introduced the world to his 36 brilliant and timeless plays grouped into comedies, histories, and tragedies. As the publishers noted (on the introductory page titled “To the great Variety of Readers”) “[Shakespeare’s] mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarse received from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our province, who onely gather his works, and give them you, to praise him…. Reade him, therefore; and againe, and againe.” Let’s review some of the fascinating fast facts about Shakespeare’s First Folio.

The First Folio was published as a tribute to Shakespeare, seven years after his death, to ensure that his dramatic masterpieces would endure for all time. The monumental work was published by two friends, John Heminge and Henry Condell, who were actors and shareholders in the King’s Men, a playing company. The book’s publication was funded by Edward Blount, a bookseller; the book was printed by Isaac Jaggard. The book took five compositors about two years to set the type.

The official title of the First Folio is Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies: published according to the true originall copies. A digital version, scanned by the Folger Shakespeare Library, can be viewed here.

The text for the plays in the First Folio was based on handwritten manuscripts (known as “foul papers” because they had numerous corrections and marginalia), cleaned up handwritten manuscripts (known as the “fair copy”, individually printed editions (18 plays had been printed inexpensively as quartos), prompt books (sheets of papers with the character’s lines and stage directions), and the actors’ own memories of performing the plays. Sadly, none of these source documents exist today — if they did, they would be certain to fetch tens of millions of dollars at auction.

The iconic portrait of Shakespeare that appears on the title page was created by Martin Droeshout, who most likely never met Shakespeare. However, Ben Jonson attests that the artist “hath hit his face” correctly.

The First Folio measures approximately 8 to 8.75 inches wide and 12.375 to 13.375 inches tall. In the world of printing, a folio (from the Latin word folium meaning “leaf”) is a large piece of paper that is folded once, creating two leaves, each with two sides. The size of the full sheet of paper was not standardized in those days; however there were six common folio sizes: double elephant, atlas, elephant, royal, medium, and crown. The First Folio is considered a crown folio (not exceeding 15 inches in height) that contains 912 pages, printed on French linen paper, with a width of about 1.75 inches. It weighs about 4.8 pounds. Because of the way the folios were printed, bound, and have aged, no two are exactly alike. Moreover, curators of the First Folios note that each has a distinct smell. The First Folio was followed by three other editions (more on that later).

Approximately 750 First Folios were printed. Of those, only 233 survive today. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. owns 82 copies. One copy, known as the Wodehouse First Folio, was purchased in 1924 for a mere $37,000. The Meisei University in Tokyo owns 12 copies.

In 1623, a First Folio cost about 1 pound (about $150-200 in today’s dollars). Today, First Folios have sold  at auction for $6.1 million (2001); $5.2 million (2006); and $9.9 million (2020).

The following 18 plays were published for the first time (in alphabetical order) and preserved for all time: All’s Well That Ends Well, Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Henry VI Part 1, Henry VIII, Julius Caesar, King John, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Timon of Athens, Twelfth Night, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Winter’s Tale.

The play Troilus and Cressida appears in the First Folio, but is not mentioned in the table of contents. The publishers did not get the rights to the play until after the table of contents had been printed.

The First Folio was successful and led to the publication of three subsequent editions. The Second Folio was printed in 1632. It contains a poem by John Milton titled “My Shakespeare.” The Third Folio was printed in 1663. The Third Folio (second impression) added the following plays: Pericles, The London Prodigal, Thomas Lord Cromwell, Sir John Oldcastle,The Puritan, A Yorkshire Tragedy, and Locrine. The Fourth Folio was printed in 1685. Of all the subsequent folios, the third is the most rare since, tragically, most copies were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1966. There are only three copies in existence today.

The value of a Second Folio is about $550,000. The Forth Folio is worth about $225,000. The Third Folio is worth about $2.5 million. Early in 2023, antiquarian bookseller Peter Harrington placed for sale a set of four folios (First, Second, Third, and Fourth) for $10.5 million. See the books here.

I know what you are thinking — “at this price, I will never own a First Folio in this lifetime.” But what if I told that you could — and for less than $200? In the world of book collecting, there is something called a facsimile — an accurate reproduction of a specific book, usually by photographic reproduction. The oldest facsimile of the First Folio is titled The First Folio of Shakespeare: The Norton Facsimile edited by Charlton Hinman. Norton produced this beautiful facsimile in 1968 and it was reissued in 1996. What makes it a very unique facsimile is that the publishers used a number of copies owned by the Folger Shakespeare Library to find the best, cleanest pages for reproduction. The slipcased book, measuring 10 x 14.9 inches, currently sells for $85 to $180 online. To mark the First Folio’s 400th anniversary, Rizzoli collaborated with the British Library to publish a new slipcased edition: Shakespeare’s First Folio: 400th Anniversary Facsimile Edition. The book measures 8.93 x 13.5 inches and currently sells for about $120. It is based on the Phelps-Clifford edition in the British Library’s collection of First Folios. You can purchase the book on Amazon here.

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

Read related posts: The Founding Father that Vandalized Shakespeare’s Chair
What if Shakespeare Wrote the Hits: Don’t Stop Believin
Were Shakespeare’s Sonnets Written to a Young Man?
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The Legacy of Shakespeare
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The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Folio
Who Are the Greatest Characters in Shakespeare?
The Most Common Myths About Shakespeare
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To learn more about Alexander Atkins Design please visit www.alexatkinsdesign.com

Ballads of Books: In the Library

In my periodic visits to used bookstores, I recently came across a delightful little book of poems titled Ballad of Books edited by Brander Matthews first published in 1886. It is not often that you find a book of poetry dedicated to book lovers. It is a shame that the book is so obscure. Naturally, most of the poems were written by poets of that era and therefore are not well-known names today. The poem that is featured below, titled “In the Library,” was written by Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta (1815 -1891), an American writer, poet, teacher and literary socialite. Let me know if the poem resonates with you.

In the Library

Speak low — tread softly through these halls;
Here genius lives enshrined, —
Here reign, in silent majesty,
The monarchs of the mind.

A mighty spirit-host they come
From every age and clime;
Above the buried wrecks of years
They breast the tide of time.

And In their presence-chamber here
They hold their regal state,
And round them throng a noble train,
The gifted and the great.

0 child of earth, when round thy path
The storms of life arise,
And when thy brothers pass thee by
With stern, unloving eyes, —

Here shall the Poets chant for thee
Their sweetest, loftiest lays;
And Prophets wait to guide thy steps
In wisdom’s pleasant ways.

Come, with these God-anointed kings
Be thou companion here,
And in the mighty realm of mind
Thou shalt go forth a peer.

Botta had a fascinating life and career. She was educated at the Albany Female Academy founded in 1814 by Ebenezer Foote who believed that girls and young women were deserving of a high quality education. It is oldest independent girls day school in the country. Early in her career, Botta taught for a short time in Albany and Providence, Rhode Island. She then moved to Washington, D.C., where she served as a personal secretary to Henry Clay, Sr., a lawyer and statesman who represented Kentucky. After a trip to Europe, where she met her husband, she returned to New York to teach English composition at the Brooklyn Girls’ Academy. She began writing freelance articles for local and national publications. Notably, she hosted a renowned salon in her home on West 37th Street, that was frequently visited by such literary luminaries as Louisa May Alcott, William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Horace Greeley, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Edgar Allen Poe. Recalling those fascinating intellectual gatherings, her friend Kate Sanborn observed, “It was not so much what Mrs. Botta did for literature with her own pen, as what she helped others to do, that will make her name a part of the literary history of the country.” During her career she published The Rhode Island Book, Handbook of Universal Literature, and Memoirs of Anne C. L. Botta: Written by Her Friends (posthumously).

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

Read related posts: Little Books, Big Ideas: On Things That Really Matter
The Wisdom of a Grandmother
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To learn more about Alexander Atkins Design please visit www.alexatkinsdesign.com

There’s A Word for That: Chatoyant

Have you ever looked at a crystal that seems to have an inner glow? Or have you look at a cat’s eyes in dim light or darkness and they seem to glow? Well, there’s a fancy word for that type of shimmering glow: chatoyant. Chatoyant, pronounced “sha TOY ant,” is defined as the changing in luster or color or more precisely, a changeable luster with an oscillating narrow band of white light. In gemology, it has a very specific meaning: the reflecting of a band of bright light reflected when a polished (but not faceted) gem is cut.

The word chatoyant is derived from the French present participle of the verb chatoyer meaning “to shimmer” or literally “to shine like a cat’s eye.” In a gem, the light is caused by aligned inclusions in the stone. On the other hand, the glow from a cat’s eye is caused by light that enters the pupil, striking the retina and the structure surrounding it, called the tapetum lucidum (literally translated from Latin, the term means “shining layer”). The tapetum lucidum serves as a concentrated concave mirror to reflect the visible light out through their eyes. This not only creates the eerie fluorescent glowing eye effect known as “eyeshine” but, more importantly, helps the cat see better in the dark. Cat owners will also notice that during the day, a cat’s pupil is elliptical, but at night becomes rounder, to allow more light in.

Related words are chatoyancy or chatoyance, which are used in gemology to describe the reflectance effect seen certain gemstones, carbon fiber, and hardwoods (such as nanmu). The effect is similar to the sheen given off by a spool of silk. Finally, there is the straightforward term used by jewelers: cat’s eye effect.

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

Read related posts: Words Invented by Dickens
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There’s a Word for That: Deipnosophist
There’s a Word for That: Pareidolia
There’s a Word for That: Macroverbumsciolist
There’s a Word for That: Ultracrepidarian
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To learn more about Alexander Atkins Design please visit www.alexatkinsdesign.com

A Delightful Collection of Quotes about Books and Libraries

I recently came across a fascinating three-volume work titled Hours in a Library published in 1874 by Leslie Stephen (1832-1904). Stephen was a British author, critic, historian, and early humanist activist. He is not as well-known as his daughter, Virginia Woolf, recognized as one of the leading modernist 20th-century writers, who introduced stream of consciousness as a form of storytelling and founded the highly influential Bloomsbury Group. Hours in a Library is a brilliant collection of critical essays on the work of Charlotte Bronte, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Daniel Defoe, George Elliot, Charles Kingsley, Sir Walter Scott, Mary Shelley, and several other British writers. The 3-volume set has been republished several times, most recently by the Folio Society in 1991. Volume 1 contains a special treat for bibliophiles — a delightful collection of quotes about books and libraries from notable authors from Bacon to Shakespeare. The seven-page section titled “Opinions of Authors” follows the table of contents. Enjoy these eloquent testimonials to the printed word.

OPINIONS OF AUTHORS

Libraries are as the shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed. (Bacon, Advancement of Leaming)

We visit at the shrine, drink in some measure of the inspiration, and cannot easily breathe in other air less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits. (Hazlitt’s Plain Speaker)

What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labours to the Bodleian were reposing here as in some dormitory or middle state. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odour of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of the sciential apples which grew around the happy orchard. (Charles Lamb, Oxford in the Long Vacation)

My neighbours trunk me often alone, and yet at such times I am in company with more than five hundred mutes, each of whom communicates his ideas to me by dumb signs quite as intelligibly as any person living can do by uttering of words; and with a motion of my hand I can bring them as near to me as I please; I handle them as I like; they never complain of ill-usage; and when dismissed from my presence, though ever so abruptly, take no offence. (Sterne, Letters)

In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends imprisoned by an enchanter in paper and leathern boxes. (Emerson, Books, Society, and Solitude)

Nothing is pleasanter than exploring in a library. (Landor, Pericles and Aspasia)

I never come into a library (saith Heinsius) but I bolt the door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance and melancholy herself; and in the very lap of eternity, among so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and sweet content that I pity all our great ones and rich men that know not their happiness. (Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy)

I do not know that I am happiest when alone; but this I am sure of, that I am never long even in the society of her I love without a yearning for the company of my lamp and my utterly confused and tumbled-over library. (Byron, Moore’s Life)

Montesquieu used to say that he had never known a pain or a distress which he could not soothe by half an hour of a good book. (John Morley, On Popular Culture)

There is no truer word than that of Solomon: ‘There is no end of making books’; the sight of a great library verifies it; there is no end — indeed, it were pity there should be. (Bishop Hall)

You that are genuine Athenians, devour with a golden Epicurism the arts and sciences, the spirits and extractions of authors. (Culverwell, Light of Nature)

He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts. (Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost)

I have wondered at the patience of the antediluvians; their libraries were insufficiently furnished; how then could seven or eight hundred years of life be supportable? (Cowper, Life and Letters by Southey)

Unconfused Babel of all tongues! which e’er
The mighty linguist Fame or Time the mighty traveller,
That could speak or this could hear!
Majestic monument and pyramid!
Where still the shapes of parted souls abide Embalmed in verse; exalted souls which now
Enjoy those arts they wooed so well below, Which now all wonders plainly see
That have been, are, or are to be In the mysterious Library,
The beatific Bodley of the Deity!
(Cowley, Ode on the Bodleian)

This to a structure led well known to fame,
And called, ‘The Monument of Vanished Minds,’
Where when they thought they saw in well­ sought books
The assembled souls of all that men thought wise,
It bred such awful reverence in their looks,
As if they saw the buried writers rise.
Such heaps of written thought; gold ofthe dead,
Which Time does still disperse but not devour,
Made them presume all was fromdeluge freed
Which long-lived authors writ ere Noah’s shower.
(Davenant, Gondibert)

Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them, to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. (Milton, Areopagitica)

Nor is there any paternal fondness which seems to savour less of absolute instinct, and which may be so well reconciled to worldly wisdom, as this of authors for their books. These children may most truly be called the riches of their father, and many of them have with true filial piety fed their parent in his old age; so that not only the affection but the interest of the author may be highly injured by those slanderers whose poisonous breath brings his book to an untimely end. (Fielding, Tom Jones)

We whom the world is pleased to honour with the title of modem authors should never have been able to compass our great design of everlasting remembrance and never-dying fame if our endeavours had not been so highly serviceable to the general good of mankind. (Swift, Tale of a Tub)

A good library always makes me melancholy, where the best author is as much squeezed and as obscure as a porter at a coronation. (Swift)

In my youth I never entered a great library but my predominant feeling was one of pain and disturbance of mind — not much unlike that which drew tears from Xerxes on viewing his immense army, and reflecting that in one hundred years not one soul would remain alive. To me, with respect to books, the same effect would be brought about by my own death. Here, said I, are one hundred thousand books, the worst of them capable of giving me some instruction and pleasure; and before I can have had time to extract the honey from one­ twentieth of this hive in all likelihood I shall be summoned away. (DeQuincey, Letter to a Young Man)

A man may be judged by his library. (Bentham)

I ever look upon a library with the reverence of a temple. (Evelyn, to Wotton)

‘Father, I should like to learn to make gold.’ ‘And what would’st thou do if thou could’st make it?’ ‘Why, I would build a great house and fill it with books.’- (Southey, Doctor)

What would you have more? A wife? That is none of the indispensable requisites of life. Books? That is one of them, and I have more than I can use. (David Hume, Burton’s ‘Life.’

Talk of the happiness of getting a great prize in the lottery! What is that to opening a box of books? The joy upon lifting up the cover must be something like that which we shall feel when Peter the porter opens the door upstairs, and says, ‘Please to walk in, Sir.’ (Southey, Life)

I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading. (Macaulay)

Our books… do not our hearts hug them, and quiet themselves in them even more than in God? (Baxter’s Saint’s Rest.

It is our duty to live among books. (Newman, Tracts for the Times, No. 2)

What lovely things books are! (Buckle, Life by Huth)

Whether the collected wisdom of all ages and nations be not found in books? (Berkeley, Querist)

Read we must, be writers ever so indifferent. (Shaftesbury, Characteristics)

It’s mighty hard to write nowadays without getting something or other worth listening to into your essay or your volume. The foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on a sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow. (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Poet at the Breakfast Table)

I adopted the tolerating measure of the elder Pliny — ‘nullum esse librum tam malum ut non in aliqua parte prodesset.’ [Translated from Latin: “no book is so bad that nothing good can be had from some part of it.”] (Gibbon, Autobiography)

A book’s a book, although there’s nothing in’t. (Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers)

While you converse with lords and dukes,
I have their betters here, my books;
Fixed in an elbow chair at ease
I choose companions as I please.
I’d rather have one single shelf
Than all my friends, except yourself.
For, after all that can be said,
Our best companions are the dead.
(Sheridan to Swift)

We often hear of people who will descend to any servility, submit to any insult for the sake of getting themselves or their children into what is euphemistically called good society. Did it ever occur to them that there is a select society of all the centuries to which they and theirs can be admitted for the asking? (Lowell, Speech at Chelsea)

On all sides are we not driven to the conclusion that of all things which men can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books? For indeed, is it not verily the highest act of man’s faculty that produces a book? It is the thought of man. The true thaumaturgio virtue by which man marks all things whatever. All that he does and brings to pass is the vesture of a book. (Carlyle, Hero Worship)

Yet it is just
That hero in memory of all books which lay
Their sure foundations in the heart of man,
That I should here assert their rights, assert
Their honours, and should, once for all, pronounce
Their benediction, speak of them as powers
For ever to bo hallowed; only less
For what we are and what we may become
Than Nature’s self, which is the breath of God
Or His pure word by miracle revealed.
(Wordsworth, Prelude)

Take me to some lofty room,
Lighted from the western sky.
Where no glare dispels the gloom,
Till tho golden eve is nigh;
Where the works of searching thought,
Chosen books, may still impart
What the wise of old have taught,
What has tried the meek of heart;
Books in long dead tongues that stirred
Loving hearts in other climes;
Telling to my eyes, unheard.
Glorious deeds of olden times:
Books that purify the thought,
Spirits of the learned dead.
Teachers of the little taught,
Comforters whon friends are fled.
(Barnes, Poems of Rural Life)

A library is like a butcher’s shop ; it contains plenty of meat, but it is all raw; no person living can find a meal in it till some good cook comes along and says, “Sir, I see by your looks that you are hungry; I know your taste; be patient for a moment and you shall be satisfied that you have an excellent appetite!” (G. Ellis, Lockhart’s Scott)

A library is itself a cheap university. (H. Sidgwick, Political Economy).

0 such a life as he resolved to live
Once he had mastered all that books can give!
(Browning)

I will bury myself in my books and the devil may pipe to his own. (Tennyson)

Words! words! words! (Shakespeare, Hamlet)

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

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Profile of a Book Lover: Rebecca Goldstein

To learn more about Alexander Atkins Design please visit www.alexatkinsdesign.com

Poetry in Remembrance of 9/11

“In the aftermath of the spectacular collapse of the twin towers on September 11, 2001, the act of turning to poetry enjoyed a revival,” observed US Poet Laureate Billy Collins. “In times of crisis, poems, not paintings or ballet, are what people habitually reach for… The formalized language of poetry can ritualize experience and provide emotional focus… Poetry also can assure us that we are not alone; others, some of them long dead, have felt what we are feeling.” Moreover, poetry that is thought-provoking and stirs the soul, assures us that we do not forget those who lost their lives and to affirm that their lives mattered.

To mark the 22nd anniversary of 9/11, Bookshelf presents three powerful poems that provide different perspectives of that tragic day — forever seared on the collective memory of several generations of Americans. The first, written by Martin Espada, pays tribute to the 43 members of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 100, who worked at the Windows on the World restaurant, who perished that day. Many of these workers were immigrants who had come to America to seek a better life for themselves and their families. The second poem, written by Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, was inspired by Richard Drew’s haunting photograph, “The Falling Man,” that captured a man hurtling, seemingly peacefully, toward his death. The clever ending of the poem, achieves the same objective as the iconic photograph: suspending the unknown man in the air for eternity — to keep him alive, if not in this world, then in our collective memory. The third poem, The Names, was written by Billy Collins a year after the attacks on the World Trade Center. The poem is a tribute to the victims, using the alphabet to remember the victims whose names were known and the victims that were not found, and thus, unknown. Ultimately, the poem’s narrator is overwhelmed by the number of names.

Alabanza by Martin Espada

Alabanza. Praise the cook with a shaven head
and a tattoo on his shoulder that said Oye,
a blue-eyed Puerto Rican with people from Fajardo,
the harbor of pirates centuries ago.
Praise the lighthouse in Fajardo, candle
glimmering white to worship the dark saint of the sea.
Alabanza. Praise the cook’s yellow Pirates cap
worn in the name of Roberto Clemente, his plane
that flamed into the ocean loaded with cans for Nicaragua,
for all the mouths chewing the ash of earthquakes.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen radio, dial clicked
even before the dial on the oven, so that music and Spanish
rose before bread. Praise the bread. Alabanza.

Praise Manhattan from a hundred and seven flights up,
like Atlantis glimpsed through the windows of an ancient aquarium.
Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen
could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations:
Ecuador, México, Republica Dominicana,
Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen in the morning,
where the gas burned blue on every stove
and exhaust fans fired their diminutive propellers,
hands cracked eggs with quick thumbs
or sliced open cartons to build an altar of cans.
Alabanza. Praise the busboy’s music, the chime-chime
of his dishes and silverware in the tub.

Alabanza. Praise the dish-dog, the dishwasher
who worked that morning because another dishwasher
could not stop coughing, or because he needed overtime
to pile the sacks of rice and beans for a family
floating away on some Caribbean island plagued by frogs.
Alabanza. Praise the waitress who heard the radio in the kitchen
and sang to herself about a man gone. Alabanza.

After the thunder wilder than thunder,
after the shudder deep in the glass of the great windows,
after the radio stopped singing like a tree full of terrified frogs,
after night burst the dam of day and flooded the kitchen,
for a time the stoves glowed in darkness like the lighthouse in Fajardo,
like a cook’s soul. Soul I say, even if the dead cannot tell us
about the bristles of God’s beard because God has no face,
soul I say, to name the smoke-beings flung in constellations
across the night sky of this city and cities to come.
Alabanza I say, even if God has no face.

Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan and Kabul
two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other,
mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue:
Teach me to dance. We have no music here.
And the other said with a Spanish tongue:
I will teach you. Music is all we have.

**********************

Photograph from September 11 by Wislawa Szymborska

They jumped from the burning floors—
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.

The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them 
above the earth toward the earth.

Each is still complete,
with a particular face
and blood well hidden.

There’s enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets.

They’re still within the air’s reach,
within the compass of places
that have just now opened.

I can do only two things for them—
describe this flight
and not add a last line.

They jumped from the burning floors—
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.

The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them 
above the earth toward the earth.

Each is still complete,
with a particular face
and blood well hidden.

There’s enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets.

They’re still within the air’s reach,
within the compass of places
that have just now opened.

I can do only two things for them—
describe this flight
and not add a last line.

**********************

The Names by Billy Collins

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.
In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name —
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner —
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O’Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
In the evening — weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds –
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

Read related posts: One of the Greatest Magazine Stories: Falling Man
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For further reading: September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond
Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets

Best Jokes for Book Lovers

If you visit the British Library in London and stop by its giftshop, you will find hundreds of curated books and gifts that are sure to delight any book lover. A recent edition to their collection is Alex Johnson’s The Book Lover’s Joke Book. Bibliophiles who collect books about books are sure to recognize the British author’s name. Johnson’s previous books are Rooms of Their Own: Where Great Writers Write; Shelf Life: Writers on Books and Reading; Book Towns: Forty-Five Paradises of the Printed Word; A Book of Book Lists; Improbable Libraries; and Bookshelf. It’s nice to know that bibliophiles do have a sense of humor and now they have book full of inside jokes. Here are some punny highlights from the book:

I slipped over in the library this morning. It was the non-friction section.

I’m working hard on an early version of my book on dog linguistics. It’s a ruff draft.

How does the Pope buy books online? He uses is Papal account.

What did the head louse in Robinson Crusoe’s hair say to the other head louse? “I’m off now, see you on Friday.”

Why did Frodo turn off his mobile phone off? He was nervous that the ring would give him away.

Taking a page out of someone’s book isn’t always a good strategy. It got me thrown out of a library.

Why didn’t the burglar break into David Foster Wallace’s house? He was scared that he might get a long sentence.

My granddaughter always has her nose in a book of Roman poetry. She’s an Ovid reader.

Why did you get kicked out of the library for miming to your friend? The librarian told me that actions speak louder than words.

What do you call a bookworm who can’t stop reading about strong female characters? A heroine addict.

Why are writers always a bit chilly? Because they are surrounded by drafts.

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

Read related posts: Words Invented by Book Lovers
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Profile of a Book Lover: Rebecca Goldstein

To learn more about Alexander Atkins Design please visit www.alexatkinsdesign.com

The Most Unusual Phobias

Thanks to evolution, humans are hardwired for fear; that is to say, we are predisposed to be fearful of dangerous creatures and situations that can harm or kill us or sometimes, things that are just gross or creepy. According to the American Psychiatric Association, nearly everyone has a psychological problem; to be more precise, most people are affected by phobias — intense fear of something or a specific situation. The word “phobia” is derived from the Greek word phobos meaning “fear.” These phobias often begin in childhood and continue into adulthood; phobias occur twice as much in women than men. Naturally, phobias are typically named with Greek prefixes. The following is a list of the most common phobias:

arachnophobia: fear of spiders
ophidiophobia: fear of snakes
acrophobia: fear of heights
aerophobia: fear of flying
cynophobia: fear of dogs
astraphobia: fear of thunder and lightning
trypanophobia: fear of injections
social phobia: fear of social interactions
agoraphobia: fear of open or crowded places
mysophobia: fear of germs and dirt

But there are hundreds of phobias — some rather unusual — that have fascinating names. Here are a few:

ablutophobia: fear of washing

alektorophobia: fear of chickens

blennophobia: fear of slime

catoptrophobia: fear of mirrors

dishabiliophobia: fear of undressing in front of someone

ereuthrophobia: fear of blushing

genuphobia: fear of knees

gephyrophobia: fear of bridges

hexakosioihexelkontahexaphobia: fear of the number 666

katsaridaphobia: fear of cockroaches

medomalacuphobia: fear of losing an erection

nomophobia: fear of being without a cell phone

panophobia: fear of everything

pinaciphobia: fear of lists (like this one!)

pugophobia: fear of buttocks

sidonglobophobia: fear of cottonballs

tonsurephobia: fear of a haircut

zelophobia: fear of jealousy

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

Read related posts: How Many Words in the English Language?
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To learn more about Alexander Atkins Design please visit www.alexatkinsdesign.com

 

 

 

Amusing Musings on Language: 2023

As word lover Richard Lederer pointed out in one of his books, the English language is crazy. Lederer observes, “to explore the paradoxes and vagaries of English, we find that hot dogs can be cold, darkrooms can be lit, homework can be done in school, nightmares can take place in broad daylight while morning sickness and daydreaming can take place at night, tomboys are girls and midwives can be men, hours — especially happy hours and rush hours — often last longer than sixty minutes, quicksand works very slowly, boxing rings are square, silverware and glasses can be made of plastic and tablecloths of paper… and most bathrooms don’t have any baths in them.” You get the idea.

Lederer’s book inspired Josh White Jr.’s song “English is Crazy” (most people are familiar with folk singer Pete Seeger’s version, played on a banjo). Of course, Lederer’s waggish observations are not lost on comedians who mine the vast English lexicon for words and phrases that make you scratch your head and utter “WTF.” Two of the most brilliant comedians who placed the English language under the comedy microscope are George Carlin and Stephen Wright. Here are some of the most amusing musings on the English language.

How can a fat chance and slim chance be the same thing?

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where is the self-help section?” She said that if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

If a writer writes, does a finger fing?

If a turtle loses its shell is it naked or homeless?

Why is it that “take out” has three radically different meanings — food, dating, and murder?

If con is the opposite of pro, is congress the opposite of progress?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth beeth?

If flying is so safe, why is the airport called “terminal”?

If people can have triplets and quadruplets why not singlets and doublets?

If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?

Why don’t hamburgers contain ham?

If the plural of mouse is mice, why isn’t the plural of house hice?

I went to a restaurant that “serves breakfast at any time” so I ordered French toast during the Renaissance.

Is Atheism a non-prophet organization?

Why does an alarm clock go off by going on?

Is it true that cannibals don’t eat clowns because they taste funny?

Isn’t it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do “practice?”

Why do humans have noses that run but feet that smell?

I saw a sign that said “Coming soon — a 24-hour restaurant.” Why would they open and close it so quickly?

I went to a general store. They wouldn’t let me buy anything specifically.

The reason the mainstream is thought of as a stream is because of its shallowness.

Why is a wise man the opposite of a wise guy?

What’s another word for thesaurus?

Why is it good when something is described as “sick”?

Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together?

I always wanted to be a somebody… perhaps I should have been more specific.

Why do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

Why are boxing rings square?

If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back?

Why do we drive on a parkway but park in a driveway?

Why is it that night falls but never breaks and day breaks but never falls?

In school, every period ends with a bell. Every sentence ends with a period. Every crime ends with a sentence.

Why is “abbreviated” such a long word?

Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?

Why do we ship by truck, but send cargo by ship?

Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?

Why isn’t phonetics spelled phonetically?

Would a fly that loses its wings be called a “walk?”

If you can wave a fan, and you can wave a club, can you wave a fan club?

Read related posts: The English Language is Crazy

The Wisdom of Steven Wright
The Wisdom of George Carlin
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For further reading: Brain Droppings by George Carlin
Crazy English: The Ultimate Joy Ride Through Our Languageby Richard Lederer
Lederer on Language: A Celebration of English, Good Grammar, and Wordplay by Richard Lederer

Letter to a Stranger: The Woman Who Helped Me Home

“We are born into a world of strangers. We spend our lives turning them into beloveds and ghosts: the ones we need, the ones we ache for, the ones we lose, the ones we brush up against and never really know, who stay with us anyway,” writes Leslie Jamison in the introduction to Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us edited by Colleen Kinder. Most of us have had a serendipitous encounter with a stranger who has helped us, comfort us, or protect us when we were alone and needed it most. The stranger often haunts us because we feel that a softly uttered “thank you” — or perhaps no expression of gratitude — rises to the level of the stranger’s kindness. What was his or her name? What was his or her story? How is it that our paths converged? Was it luck or fate? It is these moments that one’s faith in humanity is restored — if even for a few days — in the context of a daily news that feature stories about danger, violence, corruption, and tragedy. So imagine if you could write that stranger a letter — what would you say about how their actions impacted you that day and how it might have changed the trajectory of your life? That is the brilliance of Kinder’s book — she posed this question to dozens of writers: what would you write to the stranger who haunts you?

One of the letters, written by Sarah Perry titled “To the Woman Who Walked Beside Me,” recounts a late evening when she was walking down a desolate street in New York City on the way to the train station. At some point she noticed a car with tinted windows traveling beside her, matching her pace. Naturally, she was terrified; in her mind, various scenarios played out — none of them ending well for her. She sped up her pace and looked desperately down the block, looking for some form of help. Like a miracle, hope appeared in the form of a woman; she writes: “[A] block away, I saw you. Wearing a long, billowing skirt and a knit cardigan, you were red-haired like my mother and middle-aged like she now would be. My voice pushed out of me before pride could suppress it. ‘Excuse me… I think someone’s following me. There’s this car that keeps driving up. Can you walk with me, please?’ I was ashamed to do this. I was used to being on my own, to protecting myself.”

The stranger immediately understood the woman’s panic and looped her arm under Perry’s arm. Speaking in a Russian accent, the stranger calmed her down by asking her questions. The stranger patted her arm, engaged in light conversation, while they walked briskly toward the train station. Soon they approached a well-lit gas station, where a taxi was parked. The stranger asked if Perry had cash. She did, so she escorted her to the taxi and leaned into the driver’s window and said, “This is my daughter. She lives in Manhattan, Upper Weside Side. You get her home safe.” The stranger turned to Perry and gave a her a warm embrace. Perry recalls, “I hadn’t been hugged by an older woman in years. I thanked you, and said — because I wanted to play along and please you, because I wanted to say it to someone, because my mother had been dead then sixteen years — Goodnight, Mom. See you soon.” Perry arrives safely at her apartment and reflects on the stranger’s kindness: “When I got [home], I wished I could call my mother, to tell her about you. She would have been so grateful.”

________

Now, dear reader, think of a stranger who stepped into your life and helped you in some way. If you could send this person a letter, what would you want to say to him or her?

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

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To learn more about Alexander Atkins Design please visit www.alexatkinsdesign.com

Baby Boomer Words and Phrases

Baby Boomers (born 1946 – 1964) make up 21% (about 70 million) of the U.S. population in 2023. In contrast, the smallest percentage of the population is 5% for the Silent Generation (born 1928-1945) and the highest percentage is 22% for Millennials (born 1981-1996). There is a huge benefit of being older: with age comes wisdom and there is no generation that has greater collective wisdom than Baby Boomers — as a group they have the highest level of household net worth, home ownership (often mortgage-free), leadership positions (in corporations; universities; government; and politics).

To paraphrase an old adage: You can always tell a Boomer, but you can’t tell him much.” That age-old wisdom inspired the phrase “OK Boomer” in 2009 (as a comment on Reddit), meant as snarky retort for a Baby Boomer’s perceived resistance to technological change, disapproval of younger people’s opinion, or climate change denial. The phrase gained increased popularity in 2019 when it was used as a reaction to a Baby Boomer’s rant on Tiktok: “millennials and Generation Z have the Peter Pan syndrome [a pop psychology term for a socially immature adult]… they don’t ever want to grow up [and] they think that the utopian ideals that they have in their youth are somehow going to translate into adulthood.”

Like any distinct group, it has its own lingo that is easily understood within its own members but might be confusing to the uninitiated. Some of these words or phrases are now obsolete or have changed in meaning. So the next time you are hanging out with a Boomer, try out one of these:

bag
Definition: A problem.
Example: Why are you being so moody? What’s your bag?

bitchin’ (or bitching)
Definition: excellent
Example: I went to that concert — it was bitchin’.

bogart
Definition: To hog.
Example: Hey, don’t bogard all the wine; pass it over here.

boob tube
Definition: Television set.
Example: I got home after work and turned on the boob tube to catch the evening news.

bread
Definition: Money, cash.
Example: I have to earn some bread this summer. I need to find a job soon.

bummer
Defintion: Something that is disappointing or annoying.
Example: What a bummer — you have to get up at 5:00 am for your new job!

catch some rays
Definition: To sunbathe.
Example: Let’s go to the beach to catch some rays before it gets too crowded.

chick
Definition: A young woman.
Example: He date that chick for over two years before he proposed.

dipping in my Kool-Aid
Definition: Being nosy; intrusive.
Example: Who I date is none of your business — stop dipping in my Kool-Aid.

dig it
Definition: A term to mean understanding something or approving of something.
Example: The novel is about the redemptive power of love. Can you dig it?

far out
Definition: New, fresh, cool.
Example: Did you hear that new song? It was far out.

fink
Definition: A snitch.
Example: I can’t believe my best friend turned out to be such a fink.

flip your wig
Definition: Get excited or agitated.
Example: It was a small mishap. Don’t flip your wig!

fuzz
Definition: The police.
Example: Don’t play the music too loud at the party or you will attract the fuzz.

gas
Definition: A fun or enjoyable event.
Example: You should go on that amusement ride. It’s a gas!

groovy
Definition: Awesome; cool.
Example: I went to the club and that band was groovy. I danced the entire time.

heavy
Definition: A serious situation or one that is difficult to deal with.
Example: I heard your boyfriend cheated on you; that’s heavy.

lay it on me
Definition: Talk to me; tell me what’s on your mind.
Example: I hear you didn’t like the movie; lay it on me.

man
Definition: A term, used for emphasis, meant to express surprise, admiration, delight, etc.
Example: Man, am I tired. I just worked a double shift at the hospital.

meanwhile, back at the ranch
Definition: A term to change the conversation; anyhow; anyhoo
Example: We spent the entire evening at the restaurant. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my sister was singing at the open mike at the local bar.

mellow
Definition: Laid-back, relaxed
Example: You look rattled. Take a seat, drink some wine, and get mellow.

sock it to me
Definition: An emphatic urge to do something.
Example: You wrote a poem — sock it to me!

split
Definition: Leave
Example: It was great spending time with you guys, but it’s late and I have to split.

wet rag
Definition: A bore; killjoy.
Example: He’s such a wet rag; you shouldn’t invite him to the party.

wig chop
Definition: A haircut.
Example: Are you going to get a wig chop? Don’t cut it too short.

What other terms belong here?

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

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To learn more about Alexander Atkins Design please visit www.alexatkinsdesign.com