The Wisdom of Mothers

03/23/202303/23/2023 / Alexander Atkins

alex atkins bookshelf books When you hear the words National Geographic, what do you think of? If you are like most people, you instantly think of the scholarly journal with the iconic yellow border featuring stories about geography, history, nature, and archaeology, right? Well imagine my surprise when I was at an independent bookstore and picked up a copy of A Mother’s Book of Blessings: A Treasury of Wisdom for Life’s Greatest Moments by Natasha Tabori Fried that was featured on a table of “wisdom” books — a topic I feature often on this blog. Typically a book like this is published by Sterling, Chronicle Books, Random House, or Adams Media — but no, this small tome was published by National Geographic. It is a beautifully designed book, measuring only 6.75 by 6.75 inches, running 352 pages and filled with time-honored wisdom in the form of proverbs, parables, quotations, and short poems. These pearls of wisdom are organized into 12 themes: motherhood, new baby, mealtime, bedtime, birthdays, holidays, travel, nature, graduation, wedding, housewarming, and gratitude. In the introduction, Fried writes about the meaning and importance of blessings: “A blessing is like a wish, but a wish for some else. In the context of this book, blessings are wishes mothers offer their children throughout their lives, in moments big and small.” Here are some selected blessings:

Chinese proverb: One generation plants the trees / Another gets the shade.

e.e. cummings: You are my sun, my moon and all of my stars.

Native American blessing: When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced / Live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.

J. M. Barrie: You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you can still remember dreaming? That’s where I will always love you, that’s where I will be waiting.

Rainer Maria Rilke: And now we welcome the new year; full of things that have never been.

C. S. Lewis: There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind.

Henry David Thoreau: If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Confucius: Wherever you go, go with all your heart.

St. Ignatius of Loyola: Go forth and set the world on fire.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery: Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.

Arabic proverb: Gratitude takes three forms: A feeling in the heart, an expression in words, and a giving in return.

Native American Ten Commandments:

Treat the Earth and all that dwell thereon with respect.
Remain close to the Great (Creator) Spirit.
Show great respect for your fellow beings.
Work together for the benefit of all mankind.
Give assistance and kindness wherever needed.
Do what you know to be right.
Look after the well-being of mind and body.
Dedicate a share of your efforts to the greater good.
Be truthful and honest at all times.
Take full responsibility for your actions

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.

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What Do You Call Compound Words Formed by Two Rhyming Words?

03/13/202303/22/2023 / Alexander Atkins / 4 Comments

Compound words like wishy-washy or mumbo-jumbo, or any words that contain two separate rhyming words are called tautonyms (from the Greek tauto, meaning “the same” and -onym, meaning “name”). In many cases, the first word of a tautonym is a real word while the second part, often nonsensical, is invented to create a rhyme and to create emphasis. In linguistics another term for a word made up of two identical or similar parts (a segment, syllable, or morpheme) is a rhyming compound, a subclass of a larger class of words known as reduplicatives. A reduplicative is a word created by reduplication, defined as the process in which the entire word or the stem or root of the word is repeated exactly or with a small change. There are four types of reduplication:

ABLAUT REDUPLICATIVES: Partial reduplication of the base word, with only a change in the first vowel (e.g., chit-chat, hip-hop, knick-knack). In general, the order of the vowel sounds in these words follow a rule: they move from the front of the mouth to the back — short “i” to “a” to “o” (e.g., we say tick-tock, not tock-tick; or we say ding-dong, not dong-ding.”) Note how the vowel sounds move from the back to the front of your mouth when you say these words out loud: bit, bet, bat, bot, but.

EXACT (OR SIMPLE) REDUPLICATION: Full reduplication of the base word (e.g., bye-bye, choo-choo, da-da, ma-ma, night-night, no-no, pee-pee, poo-poo). Linguists refer to these words as “motherese,” “caregiver speech,” “child talk,” or “child-directed speech.”

RHYMING REDUPLICATION: Partial reduplication of the base word, with only a change in the first consonant (e.g, hokey-pokey, razzle-dazzle, super-duper). A variety of rhyming reduplication is SHM REDUPLICATION (or ECHOIC DISMISSIVE SHM): Originating in American English Yiddish, the word base is repeated with a copy that begins with “shm-” or “schm-” (e.g., fancy-shmancy, sale-schmale).

CONTRASTIVE FOCUS REDUPLICATION (OR LEXICAL CLONING): Repetition of the word with stress to distinguish its literal meaning from its intended meaning (e.g., John is rich, but he’s not RICH-rich” or “I don’t need a safety pin, I need a PIN pin”).

Speaking of reduplicatives, linguists differentiate between REAL DUPLICATIVES — compound rhyming words that contain one or two nonsensical base words (e.g., dilly-dally, hoity-toity, or mumbo-jumbo) — and FALSE DUPLICATIVES — compound rhyming words that contain two meaningful word bases (e.g., claptrap, cookbook, copshop, or payday).

Most rhyming compounds begin as hyphenated words and through common usage eventually drop the hyphen to become single words. Regardless of their hyphenation, they underscore the playfulness of the English language. Below are some common tautonyms (many function as nouns and verbs) in addition to some rare or obsolete tautonyms from two fascinating archaic word reference books: Suffolk Words and Phrases (1823) by Edward Moor and A Collection of English Words Not Generally Used (1768) by John Ray. Please contact me if you know of any rhyming compounds that should be added to this list.

airy-fairy: foolishly idealistic; impractical

argle-bargle: nonsense; heated argument

argy-bargy: heated argument

arsy-varsy: head over heels

boob-tube: television

boogie-woogie: blues-style music with a strong, fast beat; a dance to pop or rock music

chick flick: a movie primary for women

chiller-killer: a refrigerated heat exchange system

chit-chat: conversation about trivial matters

clip-clop: the sound of horse hoofs on a hard surface

crawly-mauly (rare): to stir or move about

crincum-crankum (rare): full of twists and turns; excessively elaborate or intricate

crinkle-crankle (rare): winding in and out, zigzag; a serpentine wall

crisscross: intersecting straight paths or lines

dibber-dobber: a tattle-tale; a snitch

dilly-dally: to waste time through indecision or loitering

dimber-damber (rare): leader of a group of vagrants or thieves

ding-dong: the noise made by a bell; in the UK, slang for a woman’s breast; a noisy argument; an idiot

easy-peasy: simple, achieved without difficulty

fancy-schmancy: elaborately decorated to impress

fiddle-faddle: trivial matters; nonsense; a trademarked name for popcorn; as a verb: to fuss

fingle-fangle (rare): trifle; something whimsical or unimportant

flimflam: nonsense; to swindle

flip-flop: a light sandal; backward handspring; abrupt reversal of a position or policy

fuddy-duddy: a fussy or old-fashioned person

gewgaw: cheap, showy jewelry or thing

gibble-gabble (rare): meaningless talk; nonsense

hab-nab (rare): hit or miss, succeed or fail; however it turns out, anyhow; at random

handy-dandy: convenient and useful

hanky-panky: improper behavior, typically sexual in nature

harum-scarum (rare): impetuous, reckless person

heebie-jeebies: a state of nervous fear, anxiety

hee-haw: the loud cry of a mule or donkey

helter-skelter: disorder or confusion; in disorderly haste

higgledy-piggledy: in a disorderly manner

hinchy-pinchy (rare): a child’s game (1890s) where children pinch one another with increasing force

hip-hop: a style of popular music featuring rape with electronic backing

hobnob: to mix socially, particularly with those of high social status

hocus-pocus: meaningless activity or talk, often to draw attention away from something

hodgepodge: a motley assortment of things

hoity-toity: snobbish

hokey-pokey: trickery; a song that describes the movements of a dance performed in a circle

hootchy-koochy (or hootchie-kootchie, hoochy-koochy): a dance featuring suggestive twisting and shaking of the torso performed by women who worked in carnivals.

hotchpotch (rare): a motley assortment of things; a mutton stew with vegetables

hubba-hubba: a phrase to express enthusiasm or approval

hubble-bubble: a hookah, an oriental tobacco pipe with a long flexible tube connected to a container where the smoke is cooled by passing through water

hubbub: chaotic noise created by a crowd of people; a busy, noisy situation

hugger-mugger (rare): disorderly; secret

hullabaloo: a commotion

humdrum: routine, monotonous

hum-strum (rare): music badly played; an instrument out of tune

humpty-dumpty: a rotund person; a thing or person that once overthrown cannot be restored

hurdy-gurdy: a musical instrument that makes music by rotation of a cylinder that is studded with pegs

hurly-burly: busy or noisy activity

hurry-scurry (rare): to hasten along hurriedly

I-Spy: a game in which player names the first letter of an object that he or she can see, and the other player tries to guess it

itty-bitty: very small

jibber-jabber: worthless or foolish talk; nonsense

jingle-jangle: the sound that metallic items make

joe Shmoe (or joe Schmo): an average person; no one in particular

kim-kam (rare): crooked

King Kong: a giant ape

Kit Kat: trademarked name of a chocolate-covered wafer bar

knickknack: a small object, often a household ornament, of little or no value

lovey-dovey: extremely affectionate or romantic

matchy-matchy: clothes, patterns, colors, or decorations that are the same color or very similar

mingle-mangle (rare): a confused mixture; hodgepodge

mishmash: a random assortment of things

mumbo-jumbo: language or ritual causing, or intending to cause, confusion

namby-pamby: weak in willpower, courage or vitality

niminy-piminy: very dainty or refined

nitty-gritty: the most important details about something

okey-dokey: OK

pall-mall: a 16th century game in which a wooden ball was drive through an iron ring suspended at the end of an alley

pell-mell: in a rushed or reckless manner

ping-pong: table tennis

pitter-patter: the sound of quick light steps; to move or make the sound of quick light steps

prime-time: the time period when most people watch television

prittle-prattle (rare): trivial or idle talk

ragtag: disorganized, untidy

rantrum-scantum (rare): disorderly, careless

razzle-dazzle: showy, noisy activity designed to impress

riffraff: undesirable people

roly-poly: plump

sale-schmale: doubting that something is actually on sale

shilly-shally: failing to act decisively; to vacillate

singsong: the repeated rising and falling of a person’s voice as they speak

skimper-skamper (rare): to hurry in a state of confusion

skimple-skamble: senseless, gibberish, rambled and confused

so-so: neither very good nor very bad

splash-splash: to make a splashing sound

super-duper: very good

teeny-weeny: very small, tiny

teeter-totter: a seesaw

Tic Tac: trademarked name of a hard, rounded mint

tick-tock: the sound of a clock ticking; making a ticking sound

tighty-whities: snug white briefs worn by males (variant: tight-whiteys)

TikTok: a popular social media app that allows users to create, watch and share 15-second videos

tip-top (or tiptop): excellent, of the very best quality; the highest point

tittle-tattle (rare): light informal conversation for social occasions

tohubohu: utter confusion, chaos

tootsie-wootsie (also toots-wootsy): a term of endearment

topsy-turvy: upside down; in a state of confusion

ugly-pugly: extremely unattractive

voodoo: followers of a religion that involves witchcraft and animistic deities

walkie-talkie: portable two-way radio

wibble-wobble: to move unsteadily from side to side, to tremble lightly, to quiver,

wiggle-waggle: to move jerkily back and forth; shilly-shally

wigwag: to move to and fro

willy-nilly: whether one likes it or not; without any order

wingding: a lively party or event

wishy-washy: weak, feeble, lacking character

yada-yada (or yadda yadda): used as a substitute for a longer predictable story; boring language

zigzag: a line or course with abrupt right and left turns; veering alternatively to right and left

zoot suit: a men’s suit popularized by jazz and jump blues singers in the 1930s, characterized by high-waisted, wide-legged, tight-cuffed, pegged trousers and a long coat with padded shoulders and wide lapels

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:
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/254220098_Just_a_Load_of_Hibber-Gibber_Making_Sense_of_English_Rhyming_Compounds
http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/4079596.bit-reduplication-chuck/
https://owad.de/word-show/higgledy-piggledy

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

New Words Added to Dictionary.com in 2023

03/04/202303/05/2023 / Alexander Atkins

Each year the editors of dictionary.com add new words to their online dictionary as well as revise word definitions to keep up with the English language that is always evolving. In late February, the editors added 313 new words and revised 1,100 definitions of existing words. In general, lexicographers add words to the dictionary that meet these four requirements: (1) the word is used by many people; (2) the word is used by those people with a similar meaning; (3) the word is likely to have longevity; and (4) the word is useful for a wide audience. Speaking about the new word additions for 2023, senior director of editorial John Kelly elaborated in a press release, “Language is, as always, constantly changing, but the sheer range and volume of vocabulary captured in our latest update to Dictionary.com reflects a shared feeling that change today is happening faster and more than ever before. Our team of lexicographers is documenting and contextualizing that unstoppable swirl of the English language—not only to help us better understand our changing times, but how the times we live in change, in turn, our language.” Below are some of the new words added to Dictionary.com this year, broken into general topic categories:

THE MULTIVERSE

cakeage: (noun) a fee charged by a restaurant for serving a cake brought in from outside.

digital nomad: (noun) a person who works remotely while traveling for leisure, especially when having no fixed, permanent address.

nearlywed: (noun) a person who lives with another in a life partnership, sometimes engaged with no planned wedding date, sometimes with no intention of ever marrying.

hellscape: (noun) a place or time that is hopeless, unbearable, or irredeemable.

antifragile: (adjective) becoming more robust when exposed to stressors, uncertainty, or risk.

liminal space: (noun) a state or place characterized by being transitional or intermediate in some way. Informal: any location that is unsettling, uncanny, or dreamlike.

MODERN PROBLEMS

rage farming: (noun) Informal. the tactic of intentionally provoking political opponents, typically by posting inflammatory content on social media, in order to elicit angry responses and thus high engagement or widespread exposure for the original poster.

trauma dumping: (noun) unsolicited, one-sided sharing of traumatic or intensely negative experiences or emotions in an inappropriate setting or with people who are unprepared for the interaction.

pinkwashing: (noun) an instance or practice of acknowledging and promoting the civil liberties of the LGBTQ+ community, but superficially, as a ploy to divert attention from allegiances and activities that are in fact hostile to such liberties.

cyberflashing: (noun) an act or instance of sending someone unsolicited, unwanted, sexually explicit images or video using digital platforms.

IDENTITY

WOC: (abbreviation) woman of color: a woman of color; a nonwhite woman.

latine: (adjective) of or relating to people of Latin American origin or descent (used especially by Spanish speakers in place of the anglicized gender-neutral form Latinx, the masculine form Latino, or the feminine form Latina).

native language: (noun) a language that a person acquires fully through extensive exposure in childhood.

heritage language: (noun) a language used at home and spoken natively by the adults in a family, but often not fully acquired by subsequent generations whose schooling and other socialization occurs primarily in a different language, usually a dominant or official language in the surrounding society.

GENDER

sexual minority: (noun) a member or members of the LGBTQ+ community, used especially in the context of discrimination against or advocacy for a minoritized sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

abrosexual: (adjective) noting or relating to a person whose sexual orientation is fluid or fluctuates over time. The prefix abro- comes from the Greek habrós, meaning “graceful, delicate, pretty.”

multisexual: (adjective) noting or relating to a person who is sexually or romantically attracted to people of more than one gender, used especially as an inclusive term to describe similar, related sexual orientations such as bisexual, pansexual, omnisexual, etc.

mixed-gender: (adjective) of or relating to two or more people of different genders.

folx: (noun) people; a variant spelling of “folks” (spelled with x not only as shorthand for the /ks/ sound, but also in parallel with other gender-inclusive spellings, like Latinx).

POP CULTURE AND SLANG

petfluencer: (noun) a person who gains a large following on social media by posting entertaining images or videos of their cat, dog, or other pet.

fan service: (noun) material added to a work of fiction for the perceived or actual purpose of appealing to the audience, used especially of material that is risqué or sexual in nature.

climate fiction or cli-fi: (noun) a genre of fiction, encompassing both speculative and realist works, in which climate change and other environmental concerns are major themes. Also called cli-fi.

tifo: (noun) chiefly soccer; a coordinated display, including large banners, flags, and sometimes signs or cards, executed cooperatively or performed in unison by the most fervent supporters and ultra fans in the stadium. The term comes from Italian, in which it literally means “typhus (fever)”— leading to the figurative sense of “fevered, impassioned support.”

deadass: (adverb) Slang. genuinely, sincerely, or truly; in fact.

bedwetting: (noun) Informal. A disparaging term for exhibition of emotional overreaction, as anxiety or alarm, to events, especially major decisions or outcomes.

grundle: (noun) Slang, vulgar. the region between the anus and the genitalia; perineum.

POLITICS AND CURRENT EVENTS

self-coup: (noun) a coup d’état performed by the current, legitimate government or a duly elected head of state to retain or extend control over government, through an additional term, an extension of term, an expansion of executive power, the dismantling of other government branches, or the declaration that an election won by an opponent is illegitimate.

woke: (adjective) disparaging term of or relating to a liberal progressive orthodoxy, especially promoting inclusive policies or ideologies that welcome or embrace ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities.

cakeism: (noun) the false belief that one can enjoy the benefits of two choices that are in fact mutually exclusive, or have it both ways. The first records of the term come from 2016. It is derived from the well-known expression “to have one’s cake and eat it, too.”

ecofascism: (noun) a right-wing ideology that blames environmental harm mainly on poorer nations and on marginalized groups, such as immigrants and people of color in richer nations, and that consequently advocates remedial measures that unfairly target or even attack people who are already oppressed.

burn pit: (noun) US Military. an often expansive area, at or adjacent to a base of operations, used for the uncontrolled, open-air burning of military waste, including plastics, chemicals, rubber, paint, fuels, munitions, human and medical waste, metals, and electronics: generative of toxic smoke and fumes that have been associated with a number of short- and long-term ailments suffered by exposed military personnel and civilians.

forever chemicals: plural (noun) long-lasting chemicals, including PFAS and hydrofluorocarbons, used in the manufacture of common household items such as refrigerators, nonstick cookware, and flame-resistant furniture, that remain in the environment because they break down very slowly, and subsequently accumulate within animals and people. See also biological accumulation.

microtransaction: (noun) a relatively inexpensive payment for part of a product or for an upgraded service or experience: often at the core of an alternative sales and revenue model for businesses to maximize profit with a very large volume of piecemeal or à la carte sales, rather than a single lump sum transaction for each full product sold.

family office: (noun) a financial advisory firm for extremely wealthy private individuals that is designed to offer comprehensive management of all assets, especially one that serves a single family.

HEALTH

988: (noun) the telephone number in the U.S. for a mental health crisis hotline staffed by licensed counselors and other staff trained in suicide prevention. The 988 hotline was launched in 2022, while the 911 system dates back to 1968.

subvariant: (noun) Microbiology, Pathology. a genetically distinct form of a virus, bacteria, or other microorganism, which arises when a variant of the original strain mutates.

superdodger: (noun) Pathology. anyone who, for unverified reasons, remains uninfected or asymptomatic even after repeated exposure to a contagious virus.

naloxone: (noun) Pharmacology. an opioid antagonist, C19H21NO4, used to reverse the acute respiratory depression that occurs with opioid overdose.

microdosing: (noun) the practice of taking or administering very small amounts of a psychoactive drug, such as cannabis, LSD, or psilocybin, to improve mood or enhance cognitive functioning, without hallucinogenic or other disorienting effects.

IDENTITY

WOC: (abbreviation) woman of color: a woman of color; a nonwhite woman.

native language: (noun) a language that a person acquires fully through extensive exposure in childhood.

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For further reading:www.dictionary.com/e/new-dictionary-words-winter-2023/

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

New Book: Serendipitous Discoveries From the Bookshelf, Hardcover Edition

02/25/202302/25/2023 / Alexander Atkins

My first book, Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf, is now available in hardcover. It is the perfect gift for a booklover, literature aficionado, word lover, student, teacher, or writer. Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf was written and designed by a bibliophile for bibliophiles. It is a beautifully designed and eloquent homage to books, reading, and lifelong learning. The book presents over 100 thoughtful and witty essays filled with fascinating insights, inspiring passages and parables, eloquent quotes about books and reading, valuable life lessons, fascinating rare English words, and arcane literary facts. I take the reader on a captivating and inspiring guided tour — through the world of books, literature, words, phrases, wisdom, education, quotations, movies, music, and trivia — to share fascinating serendipitous discoveries from years of book collecting, reading, and research to inspire critical thinking and lifelong learning. I hope you take a moment to browse the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon and consider purchasing it for yourself or as a gift for a book lover in your life. If you purchase it, please accept my deepest gratitude for choosing my book and supporting my labor of love. And please drop me a note and share your thoughts about the book. The book can be ordered here.

Conversation: The Most Gratifying Response to Literary Creation

02/22/2023 / Alexander Atkins

“Reading is a privileged pleasure because each of us enjoys it, quite complexly, in ways not replicable by anyone else. But there is enough structural common ground in the text itself so that we can talk to each other, even sometimes persuade each other, about what we read: and that many-voiced conversation, with which, thankfully, we shall never have done, is one of the most gratifying responses to literary creation, second only to reading itself.”

From The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age (1989) by Robert Alter. Alter is a professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at U.C. Berkeley. Alter is a world-renown scholar of the Hebrew Bible, having published 23 books, including many critically-acclaimed translations, including The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (2018) and The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (2004). His work, The Art of Biblical Narrative won the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish Thought in 2009. Another popular work is The Literary Guide to the Bible (1987) that is frequently assigned in college literature courses.

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Why Humans are Poorer than the Bees

02/19/202302/20/2023 / Alexander Atkins

alex atkins bookshelf wisdom “In Tibet we say that many illness can be cured by the one medicine of love and compassion. These qualities are the ultimate source of human happiness, and need for them lies at the very core of our being. Unfortunately, love and compassion have been omitted from too many spheres of social interaction for too long. Usually confined to family and home, their practice in public life is considered impractical, even naive. This is tragic. In my view point, the practice of compassion is not just a symptom of unrealistic idealism but the most effective way to pursue the best interest of others as well as our own. The more we — as a nation, a group or as individuals – depend upon others, the more it is in our own best interests to ensure their well-being.

Practicing altruism is the real source of compromise and cooperation; merely recognizing our need for harmony is not enough. A mind committed to compassion is like an overflowing reservoir — a constant source of energy, determination and kindness. This is like a seed; when cultivated, gives rise to many other good qualities, such as forgiveness, tolerance, inner strength and the confidence to overcome fear and insecurity. The compassionate mind is like an elixir; it is capable of transforming bad situation into beneficial ones. Therefore, we should not limit our expressions of love and compassion to our family and friends. Nor is the compassion only the responsibility of clergy, health care and social workers. It is the necessary business of every part of the human community.

Whether a conflict lies in the field of politics, business or religion, an altruistic approach is frequently the sole means of resolving it. Sometimes the very concepts we use to meditate a dispute are themselves the cause of the problem. At such times, when a resolution seems impossible, both sides should recall the basic human nature that unites them. This will help break the impasse and, in the long run, make it easier for everyone to attain their goal. Although neither side may be fully satisfied, if both make concessions, at the very least, the danger of further conflict will be averted. We all know that this form of compromise is the most effective way of solving problems – why, then, do we not use it more often?

When I consider the lack of cooperation in human society, I can only conclude that it stems from ignorance of our interdependent nature. I am often moved by the example of small insects, such as bees. The laws of nature dictate that bees work together in order to survive. As a result, they possess an instinctive sense of social responsibility. They have no constitution, laws, police, religion or moral training, but because of their nature they labour faithfully together. Occasionally they may fight, but in general the whole colony survives on the basis of cooperation. Human beings, on the other hand, have constitutions, vast legal systems and police forces; we have religion, remarkable intelligence and a heart with great capacity to love. But despite our many extraordinary qualities, in actual practice we lag behind those small insects; in some ways, I feel we are poorer than the bees…

To me, it is clear: a genuine sense of responsibility can result only if we develop compassion. Only a spontaneous feeling of empathy for others can really motivate us to act on their behalf.”

Excerpt from The Global Community and the Need for Universal Responsibility (2015) by The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. The excerpt also appears in A Conversation with The Dalai Lama on Money, Politics, and Life As It Could Be (2016) by The Dalai Lama with Fabien Ouaki. In 1989, The Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for advocating peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect in order to preserve the historical and cultural heritage of his people. The Dalai Lama has developed his philosophy of peace from a great reverence for all things living and upon the concept of universal responsibility embracing all mankind as well as nature… The Dalai Lama has come forward with constructive and forward-looking proposals for the solution of international conflicts, human rights issues, and global environmental problems.”

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For further reading: http://www.dalailama.com/messages/world-peace/the-medicine-of-altruism

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The World’s Greatest Love Letters: Mark Twain

02/14/2023 / Alexander Atkins

alex atkins bookshelf books Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Union Square & Company has published The World’s Greatest Love Letters: 800 years of Literary Romance. “Many famous men and women of the past are remembered today almost exclusively for the love letters they wrote, or that were written to them… The World’s Greatest Love Letters celebrates the love letter as a literary form, and love itself as an emotion that draws out from the lovestruck humor, pathos, poignance, charm, wit, and other attributes that distinguish and define humanity. The letters [in this volume] represent… many of the greatest expressions of love ever committed to paper,” writes Stephan Dziemianowicz in the introduction. The letters have been organized into the following sections: refined love, unrequited love, playful love, reverential love, adoring love, married love, married couples, long-distance love, mad love, bad love, love on the rocks, and the world’s greatest lover.

Below is a selection from the book, a letter written by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) to his wife, Olivia (Livy) Langdon. Twain married her on February 2, 1870, when he was 34 years old, and a famous bohemian author, and she was 24 years old, from a very strict, religious background. (Letters written by Mark Twain often come up for auction and can sell from $5,000 to $50,000.) This letter was written on November 27, 1875 to mark her 30th birthday.

Livy darling,

Six years have gone by since I made my first great success in life and won you, and thirty years have passed since Providence made preparation for that happy success by sending you into the world.

Every day we live together adds to the security of my confidence that we can never any more wish to be separated than that we can ever imagine a regret that we were ever joined. You are dearer to me to-day, my child, than you were upon the last anniversary of this birth-day; you were dearer then than you were a year before—you have grown more and more dear from the first of those anniversaries, and I do not doubt that this precious progression will continue on to the end.

Let us look forward to the coming anniversaries, with their age and their gray hairs without fear and without depression, trusting and believing that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to make them blessed.

So, with abounding affection for you and our babies, I hail this day that brings you matronly grace and dignity of three decades!

Always Yours,
S. L. C.

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There’s A Word for That: Flibbertigibbet

02/13/202302/13/2023 / Alexander Atkins / 2 Comments

alex atkins bookshelf words If you have ever been on a long flight, you have probably sat in front of one — and been annoyed the entire flight because you forgot to bring your noise-canceling headphones. Aargh! We are talking about a flibbertigibbet, defined as an excessively talkative person; a chatterbox or a silly, flighty person. The word is pronounced “fli ber TEE ji bet.” The word is a variation of the Middle English word flepergebet, introduced around the mid 1500s, that means “gossip,” “gossiper,” or “blabbermouth. The Oxford English Dictionary lists 15 variant spellings, including flybbergybe, fibber de’ jibe and flipperty-gibbet. The word is onomatopoeic, created from sounds that represent idle chatter.

In King Lear (published c. 1608), William Shakespeare uses the word flibbertigibbet for the name of a devil. In Act II, Scene IV, Edgar (disguised as a madman) speaks to Lear and his Fool: “This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; he give the web and pin, squints the eye, and makes the harelip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of the heart.” Some annotated versions of this play, indicate that Shakespeare meant the term to mean a false flatterer.

Later, Sir Walter Scott uses Flibbertigibbet for the alias of a mischievous urchin, Dickie Sludge, in the historical romance novel Kenilworth, published in 1821: “Either Flibbertigibbet,” answered Wayland Smith, “or else an imp of the devil in good earnest.”
“Thou has hit it,” answered Dickie Sludge. “I am thine own Flibbertigibbet, man; and I have broken forth of bounds, along with my learned preceptor, as I told thee I would do, whether he would or not.”

Composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein used the word flibbertigibbet in the famous musical The Sound of Music which premiered on Broadway in 1959 and ran for three years. It was adapted in the film of the same name in 1965 by director Robert Wise and screenwriter Ernest Lehman. In the song, “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria” the nuns at Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg sing the following lyrics about a free-spirited postulant named Maria von Trapp, the quintessential flibbertigibbet:

She’d outpester any pest
Drive a hornet from its nest
She could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl
She is gentle! She is wild!
She’s a riddle! She’s a child!
She’s a headache! She’s an angel!
She’s a girl!

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means Maria?
A flibbertijibbet! A will-o’-the wisp! A clown!

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Understanding Shakespeare’s Tragic Hero

02/05/202302/05/2023 / Alexander Atkins

alex atkins bookshelf literature Many students of the humanities are familiar with the great German philosophers like Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Arthur Schopenhauer; however, few are familiar with German philosopher, Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) who had a profound impact on the study of human sciences and influenced many philosophers that followed him. For Dilthey, a true polymath well-versed in history, psychology, sociology, aesthetics, hermeneutics, and philosophy, the human sciences encompassed both the social sciences and the humanities. Dilthey developed the term Geisteswisseenschaft (meaning “science of the mind” or “spiritual knowledge”) to describe the study of individual’s life in its actual cultural-historical context. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy elaborates on Dilthey’s contribution to philosophy: “Whereas the main task of the natural sciences as Dilthey found them was to arrive at law-based causal explanations, he projected the core task of the human sciences to be that of providing an understanding of the organizational structures and dynamic forces of human and historical life. It will be shown that this distinction is not so sharp as to rule out causal explanations in particular human sciences such as psychology, political theory, and economics; it mostly delimits the scope of explanations in these fields.”

Beginning in the late 1980s, Dilthey scholars Rudolf Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi began editing and publishing Wilhelm Dilthey: Selected Works in six volumes for Princeton University Press. Sadly, these books are not as accessible as they should be: they are extremely expensive and not available in digital format. The second volume titled Understanding the Human World (2010) reveals Dilthey’s tremendous erudition and insight as he explores the seminal work of William Shakespeare, who created some of literature’s most enduring heroes. In this excerpt, Dilthey explores the relation between Shakespeare’s tragic hero and the world:

“By living among these new ideas, Shakespeare used relations between the spirit of Renaissance and Protestantism to generate a feeling of life and the world that exceeded both. Regardless of how long or short life is, to live by activating the energies lying in us, to take pleasure in our essence, to do justice to the tasks springing from it, to live fully in the beauty and the happiness lying in our vicinity while prudently observing the rights and the standards dealt us by our circumstances, that is the new rule of life that he expresses more powerfully than anyone before him, and not in abstract thoughts but in the images of human existence itself.

Hence it follows that for him tragic conflicts takes place in persons themselves. Such a conflict has its roots in the soul itself. In a character whose powerfuleness we can easily imagine as exuding magnificence there is a structural incongruity so that he nonetheless falls victim to a pathological process. Because of this inadequacy, a passion emerges from this powerful psychic structure of the hero. It is suddenly elicited from the depths by conditions of life that stand in no relations to what is otherwise happening and propels the hero toward his destruction like a dream coming totally from within, a flamed that hardly needs external nourishment. If this passion violates or detroys the rights and existence of others, then, and only then, does the consciousness of it exhibit itself in pangs of conscience as punishment. For Shakespeare it is no punishment, but rather almost a beautiful fate, that death makes early claims on those who are most powerful, beautiful, and pure. Schiller expresses the same feeling at a higher stage of European development.

For Shakespeare the tragic does not lie in conflicts with the powers of the world, but within the structure of the soul, in a disproportion located there. Hence, this immense intellect must fully concentrate on grasping and understanding a person as distinctive. This person is not formed by circumstances and does not develop. Circumstances do not seem to in any way constrain the person’s impetuous course.”

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For further reading: Understanding the Human World (2010)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dilthey/

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Little Books, Big Ideas: Inspiring Quotes About Writing

02/01/202302/01/2023 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

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: The Wit and Wisdom of Women edited by the editors of Running Press, published in1993. Founded in 1972 by Stuart and Larry Teacher, Running Press specialized in small books that could be purchased as gifts.

In the introduction of The Wit and Wisdom of Women, the editors write: “The book you hold is a celebration of women’s lives, at once funny, poignant, passionate, and irrepressibly joyful… Many of these women, bound by time, place, and circumstance, could not possibly have conversed during their lifetimes — but that doesn’t mean we can’t delight in a spirited dialogue of our own making… These unexpected meetings of the mind affirm the universal quality of experience.” Here are some inspiring quotes about writing:

“We rely upon the poets, the philosophers, and the playwrights to articulate what most of us can only feel, in joy or sorrow. They illuminate the thoughts for which we only grope; they give us the strength and balm we cannot find in ourselves. Whenever I feel my courage wavering, I rush to them. They give me the wisdom of acceptance, the will and resiliance to push on.”
From A Gift of Joy (1965) by Helen Hayes

“A thing is incredible, if ever, only after it is told — returned to the world it came out of.”
From the short story “No Place for You, My Love” (1952) by Eudora Welty

“We inherit a great responsibility as well for we must give voice to centuries not only of silent bitterness and hate but also of neighborly kindness and sustaining love.”
From The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) by Alice Walker

“Although some use stories as entertainment alone, tales are, in their oldest sense, a healing art. Some are called to this healing art, and the best, to my lights, are those who have lain with the story and found all its matching parts inside themselves and its depth… In the best tellers I know, the stories grow out of their lives like roots grow a tree. The stories have grown them, from them into who they are.”
From Women Who Run with Wolves (1989) by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

“When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner’s pick, a woodcarver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year. You make the path boldly and follow it fearfully. You go where the path leads. At the end of the path, you find a box canyon. You hammer out reports, dispatch bulletins. The writing has changed, in your hands, and in a twinkling, from an expression of your notions to an epistemological tool. The new place interests you because it is not clear. You attend. In your humility, you lay down the words carefully, watching all the angles. Now the earlier writing looks soft and careless. Process is nothing; erase your tracks. The path is not the work. I hope your tracks have grown over; I hope birds ate the crumbs; I hope you will toss it all and not look back.”
From The Writing Life (1989) by Annie Dillard

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Famous Misquotations: Don’t Cry Because It’s Over; Smile Because It Happened

01/27/202301/27/2023 / Alexander Atkins

If you have attended any event that celebrates an important milestone, like a graduation or retirement, you have heard someone say: “And like Dr. Seuss said, ‘Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.'” And like many memorable quotations, this is found on all kinds of merchandise: posters, coffee mugs, t-shirts, and so forth. But like many quotes found on the internet, there is absolutely no evidence that Dr. Seuss (the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel) wrote it. No, he did not write that. Nor did the Cat in the Hat. He did not say it here or there. He did not say it anywhere. Some websites attribute the quote to Gabriel Garcia Marques or Anonymous. So which is correct? Let me welcome you into the classroom of Famous Misquotations 101, where we will seek enlightenment.

Garson O’Toole, better known as the Quote Investigator and author of the fascinating book, Hemingway Didn’t Say That (2017) joins forces with another quote investigator, Barry Popik, to discover that the actual source of this quotation is a variant of two lines from a poem by German poet Ludwig Jacobowski (1868-1900). Jacobowski lived and worked for most of his life in Berlin. He edited a local newspaper and wrote several volumes of poetry and two novels. The poem that is the focus of our attention is titled “Bright Days” (or “Radiant Days”), published in the August 1899 edition of Das Magazine fur Litteratur, a literary journal. Two key lines from that poem read “Night weinen, weil she voruber! / Lacheln, weil sie gewesen!” Translated into English the lines read: “Don’t cry because it’s over! Smile because they have been!” The entire poem appears below:

Bright Days by Ludwig Jacobowski

Ah, our brilliant days

shine like eternal stars,

They glow past as consolation

for future sorrow.

Don’t cry because it’s over!

Smile because they have been!

And if the days get cloudier,

Our stars redeem!

Fast forward to 1996, when an anonymous contributor posted this line on a Usenet newsgroup under the heading rec.humor: “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” The Wikiquotes page devoted to Dr. Seuss points out that this quotation has also been attributed to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who wrote: “No llores porque ya se terminó, sonríe porque sucedió.” Translated into English it reads, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” However, there is no source to confirm that Marquez ever wrote this.

The erroneous attribution to Dr. Seuss begins with one individual who was too lazy to do his research: Christopher Roche, the valedictorian at Albertus Magnus High School. In June 1998, The Rockland Journal-News (Rockland County, New York) quoted Roche’s valedictorian speech. Roche claimed that he was paraphrasing some lines from “Oh, the Places You’ll Go: “Like Dr. Seuss tells us, today is our day. We’re off to great places, so let’s be on our way. Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” Yikes. Even ChatGPT wouldn’t make a bonehead attribution like that. Realize how easy it would be to confirm: Oh, the Places You’ll Go is not some sprawling epic novel, like War and Peace — the book has only 56 pages with just a few sentences on each page with lots of large pictures. If Roche had even flipped through it, he would discovered that this sentence or anything with a similar sentiment simply isn’t there.

So the next time you hear someone quote from “Dr. Seuss,” please interrupt them politely and graciously enlighten them: “You mean the obscure German poet, Ludwig Jacobowski, don’t you? Please, don’t cry that you made a mistake; smile that I corrected you — so that you are spared the humiliation of looking like a fool.” Oh, the places you’ll go…

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For further reading: Famous Misquotations: Blood, Sweat, and Tears
Famous Misquotations: A Civilization is Measured by How It Treats Its Weakest Members
Famous Misquotations: The Two Most Important Days in Your Life
Famous Misquotations: The Triumph of Evil is That Good Men Do Nothing
Famous Phrases You Have Been Misquoting

For further reading:
Hemingway Didn’t Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations, Garson O’Toole, Little A, 2017.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/07/25/smile/
http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/dont_cry_because_its_over

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New Buzzwords for 2023

01/22/2023 / Alexander Atkins

alex atkins bookshelf words In early January, the editors of NPR published a list of global buzzwords that will likely dominate the headlines in 2023. Some of the words are neologisms, while others are old, well-known terms. Here are their selections:

polycrisis: a series of old problems (famines, wars, pestilence, etc.) occurring at a faster rate and with compounding effects.

poverty: the state of being extremely poor (from the Latin paupertas from pauper meaning “poor.”

traveler surveillance: testing and gathering date on people who travel.

child wasting: a life-threatening form of malnutrition in which a child has very low weight for their height.

zero-dose children: children who never receive any of the most essential vaccinations (eg, diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus).

tarmac to arm: the delivery of urgent supplies (eg, medical supplies, PPE, and food) flown into crisis-hit areas and offloaded onto airport tarmacs.

gender food gap: women who are underpaid or unemployed and live in poverty, unable to feed themselves.

aridification: the increasing mismatch between supply and demand of available water.

climate impact resilience: adopting strategies to prepare for and help blunt the impact of climate change.

The editors reached out to its readers and asked them to submit additional buzzwords for 2023. Here are some additional new words for 2023:

elite-directed growth: “Global problems (poverty, climate change, child wasting) stem from the same cultural cause. Power has become concentrated among elites — decision makers who make decisions that benefit themselves but are maladaptive for the population and environmentbecause these decision makers are insulated from the impacts of their policies. So they are either unaware of the adverse human consequences their policies have or they don’t care.”

microplastics: Microscopic bits of plastic that find their way into land, ocean, and humans (eg, the lungs) that can cause great harm.

precariat: a person who does not live in security. A portmanteau combing the words precarious and proletariat.

solastalgia: a form or emotional or existential distress caused by environmental change. Formed by the Latin word solacium (meaning “comfort”) and the Greek word forming element -algia (meaning “pain, suffering, grief”

superabundance: an amount or supply more sufficient to meet a person’s needs.

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For further reading: .npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/01/17/1148994513/a-guide-to-9-global-buzzwords-for-2023-from-polycrisis-to-zero-dose-children
npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/01/22/1150062051/we-asked-you-answered-more-global-buzzwords-for-2023-from-precariat-to-solastalg

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The Dog that Ate the Manuscript of a Famous American Novel

01/10/2023 / Alexander Atkins

alex atkins bookshelf literature It’s one thing when you’re dog eats your homework and you have to face your skeptical teacher — but what if your dog eats a manuscript considered one of the most famous American novels set in the Great Depression? Now that’s a tragedy! American writer John Steinbeck experienced that exact situation and imagine the reaction from his publisher when he had to explain that his dog ate his manuscript Of Mice and Men. The dog of this sad tale was a setter puppy named Toby that in Steinbeck’s words “[was] a very serious dog who doesn’t care much for jokes.” Apparently, he didn’t care too much for his regular dog food and switched to something with a bit more fiber. In his journal entry for May 27, 1937, Steinbeck wrote: “Minor tragedy stalked. My setter pup [Toby], left alone one night, made confetti of about half of my manuscript book. Two months work to do over again. It set me back. There was no other draft. I was pretty mad, but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically. I didn’t want to ruin a good dog for a manuscript I’m not sure is good at all. He only got an ordinary spanking… I’m not sure Toby didn’t know what he was doing when he ate the first draft. I have promoted Toby-dog to be a lieutenant-colonel in charge of literature. But as from he unpredictable literary enthusiasms of this country, I have little faith in them.”

The title Of Mice and Men was inspired by two of the lines from the poem “To A Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Lough, November, 1785” by Scottish poet Robert Burns. The poem is written in a light Scots dialect which is foreign to modern readers. The specific lines from the seventh stanza are: “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley. (The best laid schemes of mice and men / Often go awry.)” Steinbeck completed his work on his manuscript for Of Mice and Men and the book was published later that year in 1937. Toby eventually recovered from his spanking and never ate another manuscript again.

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For further reading: Conversations with John Steinbeck by Thomas Fensch

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The Most Beautiful People Are Those Who Have Known Defeat, Suffering, Struggle, and Loss

01/07/2023 / Alexander Atkins

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.

From the book Death: The Final Stage of Growth, published in 1975, by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926-2004), a Swiss-American psychiatrist who was the leading authority in the field of death and dying. Kübler-Ross introduced her theory of the five stages of grief in her seminal work, On Death and Dying published in 1969. The five stages of grief, known as the Kübler-Ross model, are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In a work published after her death (Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief” co-authored with David Kessler, 2019), Kübler-Ross adds a sixth stage: finding meaning. Interestingly, Kübler-Ross theory was based on people who were dying as opposed to actually grieving; therefore, perhaps it would be more accurate to call them the “five stages of accepting death by individuals with terminal illness.” More significantly, the theory is not supported by empirical research or evidence.

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For further reading: www.ekrfoundation.org/elisabeth-kubler-ross/quotes/

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Most Expensive Books Sold in 2022

01/05/202301/05/2023 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

When dedicated bibliophiles want to purchase a book, they generally turn to AbeBooks rather than Amazon Marketplace or eBay. AbeBooks was founded in Victoria, British Columbia, as the Advanced Book Exchange in 1995 by four bibliophiles. The company was acquired by Amazon in 2008. The site lists more than 140 million books from thousands of independent booksellers, many former brick-and-mortar establishments, from more than 50 countries.

Each year, AbeBooks publishes the list of the most expensive rare books sold on the site, providing a glimpse into what books have come onto the market and what bibliophiles are willing to pay for their Holy Grails. Despite how high these numbers are, they pale in comparison to the price that bibliophiles pay for exceptionally rare and valuable books that are only sold at auction or through private broker sales.

(1) I Quattro Libri dell Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture, 1570) by Andrea Palladio, $57,750
This influential first edition set of four books about architecture was written by Andrea di Pietro (nicknamed Palladio) who worked extensively in Venice. His style, known as Palladian architecture, was influenced by the classical architecture from ancient Greek and Roman traditions. Palladian architecture is characterized by its grand appearance and use of classical elements, specifically, symmetry, harmony, balance, tall columns (Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian), and intricate detail.

(2) Cook’s Voyages (1773-1784) by John Hawkesworth, $50,000
This is a rare first edition set (nine volumes) of the official accounts of British explorer Captain James Cook’s three voyages in the Pacific Ocean published in 1773, 1777, and 1784. During the 18th century, these books were bestsellers because Europeans were curious about life in distant lands: New Zealand, Australia, and the Hawaiian Islands.

(3) How to Trade Stocks (1940) by Jesse Livermore, $40,000
A first edition, signed by the author, published by Duell, Sloan & Pearce. In the 1920s, Livermore was one of the great stock traders, worth millions, who traded with his own money. His formula for monitoring trends is still used today — more than 80 years later.

(4) Cantiques des Cantiques (1931) by Solomon, $25,000
This is a rare French limited edition (1 of 8) of The Canticle of Canticles (or Song of Songs), an erotic poem, illustrated by British artist Eric Gill. The Song of Songs, which signifies the “most excellent, best song,” is one of three books of Solomon, contained in the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Christian Canon of the Scriptures. The literal subject of the poem is love and sexual longing between a woman and a man. Because it explicitly says little or nothing about the relationship of God and man, Christians commentators turn to allegory to treat the love that the poem celebrates as an analogy for the love between God and Church.

(5) The Time Machine (1895) by H. G. Wells – $30,500
This is a first edition of Wells’ first novel published by Henry Holt. The author’s signature appears below his misspelled name on the title page (“H.S. Wells”). Wells not only popularized the concept of time travel in a machine, and coined the term “time machine.” The novel is considered one of the seminal works of science-fiction literature that inspired countless stories about time travel.

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For further reading: http://www.abebooks.com/books/rarebooks/most-expensive-sales-2022

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Banished Words and Phrases for 2023

01/02/2023 / Alexander Atkins / 2 Comments

alex atkins bookshelf words Back in 1976, W. T. “Bill” Rabe, who was director of public relations for Lake Superior State University (LSSU) published a tongue-in-cheek list of banished words (inspired by a conversation at a New Year’s Eve party the previous year) as a way to promote the university and to distinguish it from it earlier association with Michigan Tech. (LSSU is located in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, one of the oldest European settlements in the American midwest.) The list, should really be titled “words and phrases from the previous year that are overused or misused and should be retired.” The list was a hit around the globe, and the tradition of publishing a list of banished words on December 31 of each year. After Rabe retired, the university copyrighted the concept in order to “to uphold, protect, and support excellence in language by encouraging avoidance of words and terms that are overworked, redundant, oxymoronic, clichéd, illogical, nonsensical—and otherwise ineffective, baffling, or irritating.” Amen.

Throughout the year, the university invites the public (apologies to the Statue of Liberty) to send us your tired, your hackneyed, your annoying, horrible words, yearning to be excised from the modern lexicon, the wretched refuse of the English language. And the public responds generously: LSSUThe university receives tens of thousands of nominations. LSSU recently published its list of Banished Words for 2023 along with its rationale for inclusion.

1. GOAT (Greatest of All Time)
This acronym gets the goat of petitioners and judges for overuse, misuse, and uselessness. Ironically, “goat” once suggested something unsuccessful; now, GOAT is an indiscriminate flaunt.

2. Inflection point
Originally a mathematical term, it is a pretentious way to say turning point.

3. Quiet quitting
A very misleading term: the definition is not an employee who quietly resigns, but rather an employee who completes the minimum requirements for a position. This is nothing new: older words are burnout, ennui, boredom, disengagement.

4. Gaslighting
The term is often misused as incorrect catchall to refer generally to conflict or disagreement.

5. Moving forward
Related to the term “going forward” that was banished in 2001.

6. Amazing
It is a worn-out adjective from people short on vocabulary.

7. Does that make sense?
The term with — its demand, for clarification or affirmation as filler, insecurity, and passive aggression — annoyed many people. “Why say it, if you must ask?

8. Irregardless
Let’s begin with the obvious: this is not even a word. At most, it’s a nonstandard word, per some dictionaries. Take ‘regardless’ and dress it up for emphasis, showcasing your command of nonexistent words.

9. Absolutely
Why not simply say “yes.” It is often said too loudly by annoying people who think they’re better than you or it sounds like it comes with a guarantee when it doesn’t.

10. It is what it is
Whether you call it tautology or a verbal crutch, the phrase is absolutely useless, pointless. Of course it is what it is; what else would it be? People who use it are being dismissive or borderline rude.

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For further reading: https://www.lssu.edu/traditions/banishedwords/

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Word of the Year 2022

12/31/202201/22/2023 / Alexander Atkins

“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. — in the words of the editors of Oxford Dictionaries, “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.”

Across the pond, the editors of Oxford Dictionaries decided to change things up a bit. Typically the editorial board decides on the word of the year; however, for 2022 they launched an online poll to have the public select the word of the year from a list of three candidates: goblin mode, metaverse, and #StandWith. And the winner is — drum roll, please — “goblin mode.” Goblin mode is defined as “a type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.” The editors explain, “Although first seen on Twitter in 2009, goblin mode went viral on social media in February 2022, quickly making its way into newspapers and magazines after being tweeted in a mocked-up headline. The term then rose in popularity over the months following as Covid lockdown restrictions eased in many countries and people ventured out of their homes more regularly. Seemingly, it captured the prevailing mood of individuals who rejected the idea of returning to ‘normal life’, or rebelled against the increasingly unattainable aesthetic standards and unsustainable lifestyles exhibited on social media.”

Meanwhile, the editors of Merriam-Webster selected the word “gaslighting” as its 2022 Word of the Year. Gaslighting is defined as “psychological manipulation of a person, usually over an extended period of time, that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.” A more general definition provided by the dictionary is “The act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.” Merriam-Webster senior editor, Pete Sokolowski elaborates, “There is this implication of an intentional deception. And once one is aware of that deception, it’s not just a straightforward lie, as in, you know, I didn’t eat the cookies in the cookie jar. It’s something that has a little bit more devious quality to it. It has possibly an idea of strategy or a long-term plan.” Other candidates for word of the year that the editors reviewed were: oligarch, omicron, codify, queen concert, raid, sentient, cancel culture, LGBTQIA, loamy.

For 2022 Word of the Year, the editors of Macquarie Dictionary (the Webster’s Dictionary of Australia) selected “teal” — and it is not the initial definition you think of (green-blue color), but rather a newly formed political meaning: “an independent political candidate who holds generally ideologically moderate views, but who supports strong action regarding environmental and climate action policies, and the prioritizing of integrity in politics.” In Australia’s 2022 elections, teal candidates — independent candidates that challenged established figures in the Labor and Liberal parties — dominated the election. The etymology is based on the use of the color teal as a branding color for Zali Steggall’s political campaign. Teal stood out against the colors used by Labor candidates who used red, and Liberal candidates use use blue. Runners up to the word of the year included: goblin mode, spicy cough, bachelor’s handbag,

For 2022 Word of the Year, the editors of Dictionary.com selected “woman,” defined as “an adult female person.” Woman is derived from the Old English wifman, combing the words wif (meaning female or woman) and man (meaning person). The first recorded use is in the year 900. The editors explain their rationale for selecting this old word: “It’s one of the oldest words in the English language. One that’s fundamental not just to our vocabulary but to who we are as humans. And yet it’s a word that continues to be a source of intense personal importance and societal debate. It’s a word that’s inseparable from the story of 2022. This year, searches for the word woman on Dictionary.com spiked significantly multiple times in relation to separate high-profile events, including the moment when a question about the very definition of the word was posed on the national stage. Our selection of ‘woman’ as our 2022 Word of the Year reflects how the intersection of gender, identity, and language dominates the current cultural conversation and shapes much of our work as a dictionary… The biggest search spike started at the end of March, during a confirmation hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who in April became the first Black woman to be confirmed as a US Supreme Court justice. Specifically, the surge in lookups came after she was asked by Senator Marsha Blackburn to provide a definition for the word woman. It was a rare case of not just a word in the spotlight, but a definition. We at Dictionary.com weren’t the only ones to take notice. The prominence of the question and the attention it received demonstrate how issues of transgender identity and rights are now frequently at the forefront of our national discourse. More than ever, we are all faced with questions about who gets to identify as a woman (or a man, or neither). The policies that these questions inform transcend the importance of any dictionary definition—they directly impact people’s lives.” Runners up included: Ukraine flag emoji, inflation, quiet quitting, democracy, Wordle.

Collins Dictionary, published in Glasgow, Scotland, selected “permacrisis” as its 2022 Word of the Year. Permacrisis is defined as “an extended period of instability and insecurity” or a series of consecutive dramatic events that create a sense of dread, wondering what the next crisis will be. The editors of Collins Dictionary note, “[Permacrisis] is one of several words… that relate to ongoing crises the UK and the world have faced and continue to face, including political instability, the war in Ukraine, climate change, and the cost-of-living crisis.” Runners us include: partygate, warmbank, lawfare, sportswashing, Kyiv, splooting, Carolean, quiet quitting, vibe shift.

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For further reading:
https://www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-the-year/
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty
languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2022/
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-of-the-year
https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/resources/view/word/of/the/year/2022

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

What Can Dickens’ A Christmas Carol Teach Us?

12/26/2022 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

Students of literature, indeed anyone who loves books and stories, can agree on one universal truth — that, in the words of C. S. Lewis “we read to know that we are not alone.” Novelist and essayist James Baldwin adds: “You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone.”

Another universal truth is that we read to learn, to heal, and to transform ourselves. As George Dawson, an English literature lecturer and founder of the Shakespeare Memorial Library in Birmingham, observed: “The great consulting room of a wise man is a library… the solemn chamber in which man can take counsel with all that have been wise and great and good and glorious amongst the men that have gone before him.”

On this day after Christmas, we turn our attention to a ghostly little story that has much to teach: Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol — a story of about redemption, forgiveness, and generosity. But Dickens did not write A Christmas Carol simply to amuse us; he wrote it to inspire self-reflection and change — to help us become better human beings. “Beyond entertaining us,” writes Bob Welch in 52 Little Life Lessons From A Christmas Carol, “Dickens wanted to make us uncomfortable, because it’s only after we get a touch uneasy with ourselves that we open ourselves to change… to create a spark that might lead to flames of action: changing how we look at the world, changing how we act in the world, and ultimately changing how we will be remembered in the world.” Indeed, if we are able to transform ourselves, in light of the lessons from Dickens’s classic story, this is the Christmas miracle.

Bookshelf presents some important life lessons from A Christmas Carol gleaned from Welch’s enlightening little book:

Don’t be selfish
Don’t let people steal your joy
See life as a child
Everyone has value
Life isn’t just about business
You make the chains that shackle you
Humility enhances vision
To heal you must feel
Your actions affect others
The love of money costs you in the end
Life is best lived when you are awake
Learning begins with listening
Attitude is everything
The past can be empowering
Don’t return evil for evil
Bitterness will poison you
Dying lonely is the result of living lonely
Pain is the privilege of losing someone you care deeply about
Amid tragedy, others still need you
Before honor comes humility
Give because you have been given to
Giving changes your perspective
Live with the end in mind
It is never too late to change
Be the change you want to see

In A Christmas Carol, Dickens gives us one of the most famous endings in literature, highlighting the fact that the holidays present a special opportunity for redemption, the chance to be a better human being:

“Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”

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For further reading: 52 Little Lessons From A Christmas Carol by Bob Welch (2015)

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

Twas The Night Before Christmas History and Trivia

12/24/202212/26/2022 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

Two literary works that have had the greatest impact on how we celebrate Christmas today are A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (also known as “The Night Before Christmas,” or “Twas the Night Before Christmas”) by Clement Clarke Moore. Like A Christmas Carol, Twas the Night Before Christmas has never been out of print for over 150 years. The poem endures as a cherished tradition as parents read the poem to the entertainment and delight of their children on Christmas eve as they anxiously await the magical visit of St. Nicholas.

Who Really Wrote Twas the Night Before Christmas?
Although the poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas” was originally published anonymously in the Troy Sentinel (New York) on December 23, 1823 (under the title “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas”), it was eventually attributed to Moore (1779-1863), a professor of Theology and Oriental and Greek Literature at the General Theological Seminary in New York, who had written the poem a year earlier. Moore eventually included the poem in an anthology titled Poems published in 1844.

Because Moore had not taken credit for the poem much earlier, relatives of Henry Livingston, Jr. (a distant relative of Moore’s wife, Catherine), began promoting a story that Livingston, an aspiring poet, had actually written “A Visit” in the early 1800s. The main evidence was their recollection (Elizabeth Clement Brewer Livingston recalled in 1848 or 1861 after reading Moore’s poem, that her father had actually written the poem in 1808); the only manuscript, they claimed, had been destroyed by fire. The claim gained traction when Don Foster, an English literature professor and expert on textual analysis (he worked on the Unabom case), examined writings by Moore and Livingston and concluded (based on the metrical scheme, phraseology, and Dutch references) that it was indeed Livingston who wrote the poem.

The evidence supporting Moore is overwhelming. First there is contemporaneous testimony from colleagues that Moore wrote the original poem (they physically handled and read a handwritten copy). Seth Kaller, a leading expert in American historic documents, who once owned one of the four handwritten copies of the poem, did extensive research and disputed Foster’s analysis point by point. Kaller’s research also turned up earlier writings and poems by Moore that are consistent with the meter and phraseology of “A Visit.” Moreover, Kaller could not find any written evidence to support the Livingston claim; he writes: “By the time [Moore] included it in his own book of poems in 1844, the original publisher and at least seven others had already acknowledged his authorship. Four manuscripts penned by Moore… survive: in The Strong Museum, The Huntington Library, The New-York Historical Society, and one in private hands.”

Why is the Poem Twas the Night Before Christmas so Important?
The poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas” is significant because it directly influenced the mythology of Santa Claus in the 19th century: the red suit, the bundle of toys, the eight flying reindeer (and their names) pulling a sleigh, filling the stockings with gifts, the smoking pipe, and entering and exiting the house through the chimney. Prior to Moore’s colorful depiction, Christians were familiar with the legend of the original St. Nicholas (Saint Nicholas of Myra), a Greek bishop who lived in the 4th century (270-343). He was the patron saint of sailors, merchants, children, brewers, unmarried people, students [take a breath here] — and a partridge in a pear tree. Depicted as a tall, slender man, St. Nicholas was known for his charity work — during the evening he would secretly bestow gifts to his parishioners. Moore was also influenced by the depiction of Santa Claus in Washington Irving’s famous work, A History of New York (also known as Knickerbocker’s History of New York) published in 1809. Irving, of course, drew from the Dutch and German lore of Sinterklaas (Santa Claus). Unlike St. Nicholas who was an actual person, Sinterklaas is a fictitious character who is based on St. Nicholas. Sinterklaas was depicted as a willowy bishop who rode a white horse. He carried a large red book that contained children’s names and whether they behaved good or bad the previous year.

From a literary and linguistic point of view, the poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas” is significant on two fronts: first, it is one of the best known verses composed by an American poet. Just about everyone knows the line even if they have never read the poem. Second, it is one of the most well-known uses of a clitic — a morpheme that functions like a word but is not spelled or pronounced completely: “twas” is a contraction of the two words “it was.” Because the morpheme is attached before the host word, it is known as a proclitic. Two other common proclitics are the words “c’mon” (a contraction of “come on”) and “y’all (a contraction of “you all”).

What is the Origin of the Poem Twas the Night Before Christmas?
The actual origin of the poem is a fascinating story. The staff of Heritage Auctions, which sold a handwritten and signed copy of Moore’s famous poem for $255,000 on December 9, 1994 summaries the origin of the poem in the manuscript’s listing: “Eliza [Moore’s wife], was roasting turkeys to be given to the less fortunate parishioners from their church, and she found that one additional turkey was needed. Being a good husband and a compassionate man, he set out on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, 1822 to make the requested purchase. Calling for his coachman and sleigh, he set out for the market, which was then in the Bowery section of town. It was cold and snowy in Manhattan and Moore sat back and composed a poem for his children, the meter of which was probably inspired by the sleigh bells… Later that evening, after dinner, he read the quickly composed poem to his family as a surprise present… Written only for the entertainment of his family, Moore probably put his original manuscript in a desk and forgot about it.. [The] next year, a family visitor to the Moore home by the name of Miss Harriet Butler (daughter of the Reverend David Butler of St. Paul’s Church in Troy, New York) was told about it by the Moore children. She copied the poem into her album and later gave a handwritten copy of it to the editor of the local newspaper, The Troy Sentinel where it was printed anonymously on December 23, 1823, with the editor-assigned title “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas.” The response to the poem was overwhelmingly positive and he reprinted it every year thereafter. Soon it was being printed and reprinted in almanacs, books, and school primers. It was not until 1837 that Moore allowed his name to be published as author and, in 1844, he included it in a published collection of his poetry.”

The Value of the Poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas”
Heritage Auctions sold a handwritten and signed copy of Moore’s famous poem for $255,000 on December 9, 1994. The buyer was Ralph Gadiel, founder of International Resourcing Services Company (Northbrook, IL) that marketed miniature Christmas village houses (Liberty Falls Collection) from 1990 to 1998. Gadiel died of cancer in 1998 and sold his company to another businessman. The Liberty Falls Collection, never regained its popularity and success and was eventually discontinued in 2008. The poem went up for auction again through Heritage Auctions on December 20, 2006. The auction house identified the buyer as a CEO of a media company who wanted to read it to friends and business associates at his holiday party held in his Manhattan apartment.

Twas the Night Before Christmas By the Numbers
Number of lines: 56
Number of words: 500
Meter: two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable (anapestic meter)
Number of reindeer: 8
First written: December 24, 1822
First published in newspaper: 1823
First published in a book: 1844
Poem is first illustrated: 1863
Number of hand-written copies of poem: 4 (3 are owned by museums; one is privately owned)
Value of a hand-written copy: $280,000
Value of a first edition of Poems: $15,000
Number of editions of “The Night Before Christmas” owned by the Carnegie Mellon Hunt Library: 400
Number of results for “The Night Before Christmas” on Amazon: over 6,000
Number of results for “The Night Before Christmas” on Google: 1.86 billion
Number of results for “The Night Before Christmas” on Google Books: 5.7 million

“Account of A Visit From St. Nicholas” as originally published in the Troy Sentinel (New York), on Tuesday, December 23, 1823
The poem, under the title “Account of A From St. Nicholas,” was printed with the following introduction, most likely written by the newspaper’s editor, Oroville Holley. Careful readers may note that in line 22 of the poem, two of the reindeer are named Dunder and Blixem. There are two explanations for this mistake: either the newspaper’s typesetter misread Harriet Butler’s handwriting or perhaps Butler transcribed Moore’s poem incorrectly; Moore used the names “Donner” and “Blitzen.”

“We know not to whom we are indebted for the following description of that unwearied patron of children—that homely, but delightful it personification of parental kindness—Sante Claus, his costume and his equipage, as he goes about visiting the fire-sides of this happy land, laden with Christmas bounties; but, from whomsoever it may have come, we give thanks for it. There is, to our apprehension, a spirit of cordial goodness in it, a playfulness of fancy, and a benevolent alacrity to enter into the feelings and promote the simple pleasures of children, which are altogether charming. We hope our little patrons, both lads and lasses, will accept it as proof of our unfeigned good will toward them —as a token of our warmest wish that they may have many a merry Christmas; that they may long retain their beautiful relish for those unbought, homebred joys, which derive their flavor from filial piety and fraternal love, and which they may be assured are the least alloyed that time can furnish them; and that they may never part with that simplicity of character, which is their own fairest ornament, and for the sake of which they have been pronounced, by authority which none can gainsay, the types of such as shall inherit the kingdom of heaven.”

’Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danc’d in their heads,
And Mama in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap—
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprung from the bed to see what was the matter,
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below;
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and call’d them by name:
“Now! Dasher, now! Dancer, now! Prancer, and Vixen,
“On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Dunder and Blixem;
“To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
“Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”
As dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly,
When they-meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys—and St. Nicholas too:
And then in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound:
He was dress’d all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnish’d with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys was flung on his back,
And he look’d like a peddler just opening his pack:
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry,
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face, and a little round belly
That shook when he laugh’d, like a bowl full of jelly:
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laugh’d when I saw him in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And fill’d all the stockings; then turn’d with a jirk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprung to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle:
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.—

The Night After Christmas by Clement C. Moore
The Library at the General Theological Seminary in New York City owns several copies of the poem, including a first edition of Poems (1844) that is signed by Moore to the the Reverend Samuel Seabury; it reads: “To the Reverend Dr. Seabury, with the respect of his friend the author, July 1844.” The library also owns a copy of “The Night after Christmas” that is a follow-up to the original poem. The “Night after Christmas” was published anonymously after Moore’s death in 1863. The poem appears below:

Twas the night after Christmas, when all through the house
Every soul was in bed, and as still as a mouse;
Those stockings, so lately St. Nicholas’s care;
Were emptied of all that was eatable there;
The darlings had duly been tucked in their beds,
With very dull stomachs and pain in their heads;
I was dozing away in my new cotton cap,
And Fancy was rather far gone in a nap,
When out in the nursery arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my sleep, crying “What is the matter?”

I flew to each bedside, still half in a doze,
Tore open the curtains and threw off the clothes,
While the light of the taper served clearly to show
The piteous plight of those objects below;
But what to the fond father’s eyes should appear
But the little pale face of each little sick dear,
For each pet had crammed itself full as a tick,
And I knew in a moment now felt like old Nick.

Their pulses were rapid, their breathings the same;
What their stomachs rejected I’ll mention by name;
Now turkey, now stuffing, plum pudding of course,
And custards and crullers and cranberry sauce,
Before outraged nature all went to the wall;
Yes — lolypops, flapdoodle, dinner and all;
Like pellets that urchins from pop-guns let fly,
Went figs, nuts and raisins, jam, jelly and pie,
Till each error of diet was brought to my view-
To the shame of mamma, and of Santa Claus too.

I turned from the sight, to my bed room stepped back,
And brought out a phial marked “Pulv. Ipecac,”
When my Nancy exclaimed, for their sufferings shocked her,
“Don’t you think you had better, love, run for the doctor?”
I ran — and was scarcely back under my roof,
When I heard the sharp clatter of old Jalap’s hoof;
I might say that I had hardly turned myself around,
When the doctor came into the room with a bound.

He was covered with mud from his head to his foot,
And the suit he had on was his very worst suit;
He had hardly had time to put that on his back,
And he looked like a Falstaff half muddled with sack.
His eyes how they twinkled! Had the doctor got merry?
His cheeks looked like port and his breath smelt of sherry.
He hadn’t been shaved for a fortnight or so,
And his short chin wasn’t as white as the snow;
But inspecting their tongues in spite of their teeth,
And drawing his watch from his waistcoat beneath,
He felt of each pulse, saying “Each little belly
Must get rid” — here they laughed — “of the rest of that jelly.”

I gazed on each chubby, plump, sick little elf,
And groaned when he said so in spite of myself;
But a wink of his eye when he physicked our Fred,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He didn’t prescribe, but went straightway to work
And dosed all the rest; — gave his trousers a jerk,
And added directions while blowing his nose,
He buttoned his coat, from his chair he arose,
Then jumped in his gig, gave old Jalap a whistle,
And Jalap jumped off as if pricked by a thistle;
But the doctor exclaimed, ere he drove out of sight.
“They’ll be well by to-morrow; good night Jones, good night.”

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: Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous by Don Foster, Henry Holt (2000)
The World Encyclopedia of Christmas by Gerry Bowler, McClelland & Stewart (2000).
Diedrich Knickerbocker’s History of New York by Washington Irving, Easton Press (1980).
http://iment.com/maida//familytree/henry/xmas/poemvariants/troysentinel1823.htm
http://www.cmu.edu/cmnews/031217/031217_nitebefore.html
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17382/17382-h/17382-h.htm
theconversation.com/twas-the-night-before-christmas-helped-make-the-modern-santa-and-led-to-a-literary-whodunit-171637
http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/Christmas/nightafter.htm
http://www.sethkaller.com/about/educational/tnbc/
historical.ha.com/itm/autographs/authors/handwritten-and-signed-fair-copy-of-clement-clarke-moore-s-twas-the-night-before-christmas-the-only-one-in-private-hands-/a/629-25885.s
https://apnews.com/article/efdeb698d67ff9dbf0074e7410f1665e
https://www.telegram.com/story/news/local/north/2006/12/21/1860-christmas-poem-twas-sold/52998978007/
https://www.sacred-texts.com/etc/xmas/vsn/vsn01.htm

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

The Atkins Bookshelf Literary Christmas Price Index: 2022

12/20/202212/19/2022 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

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 2022, it reached $45,523.27 — an increase of $4,317.69 (10.5%) from 2021 (CPI was $41,205.58). In 2022, the most expensive gift is the ten lords-a-leaping that costs $13,980. 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 2022, the Atkins Bookshelf Literary Christmas Price Index is $150,485 (shipping and tax are not included), a whopping increase of $41,860 (about 39%) from last year ($108,625). 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. The second most expensive Christmas book, coming in at $15,000 (the price is also unchanged from last year), 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. Below are the individual costs of the books that make up the

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

A Visit from St. Nicholas (included in Poems, 1844) by Clement C. Moore: $15,000

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957) by Dr. Seuss: $8,800

A Christmas Memory (1966) by Truman Capote: $35,000

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: $1,800

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902) by L. Frank Baum: $5,635

The Greatest Gift (1944) by Philip Van Doren Stern: $3,000

In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash (A Christmas Story) by Jean Shepherd: $250

Old Christmas: from the Sketchbook of Washington Irving (1876) by Washington Irving: $1,250

The Gift of the Magi (included in The Four Million, 1905) by O. Henry: $1,250

Happy Holidays!

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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

The Antiquarian Bookseller’s Catalog: December 2022

12/12/2022 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

alex atkins bookshelf books An antiquarian bookseller’s catalog is a bibliophile’s literary treasure trove between two covers. Open any catalog, and you will find beautiful, sought-after gems — rare first editions, inscribed copies, manuscripts, letters, screenplays, and author portraits — from some of the most famous authors in the world.

Ken Lopez has been an antiquarian bookseller since the early 1970s. Formerly the president of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, Lopez focuses on first editions, literature of the 1960s, the Vietnam War, nature writing, and Native American literature. He is the quintessential bibliophile — as passionate about discovering rare books as he is about preserving literary history. Bibliophiles salivate as they browse through his comprehensive catalogs, filled with fascinating and valuable literary treasures. Here are some highlights from his most recent catalog, Modern Literature No. 173 (December 2022):

Light in August by William Faulkner (1932), in a custom clamshell: $15,000

Turn About by William Faulkner (1939), one of only five copies of the first separate edition of Faulkner’s short story of WWI that was first published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1932: $15,000

The Mansion by William Faulkner (1959), Limited edition (91 of 500) signed by the author: $1,500

Privacy by Richard Ford (1999), a fine press limited edition (1 of 35), in a clamshell case: $5,000

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1971), first American edition: $125

Stepppenwolf by Hermann Hesse (1970), the uncorrected proof copy of a reissue of Hesse’s novels, first published in 1929: $250

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For further reading: lopezbooks.com

What Do You Call That Wonderful Old Book Smell?

12/06/202201/10/2023 / Alexander Atkins

alex atkins bookshelf books A fews decades ago, in a top ten list of holiday gifts to give or receive, books were the number one gift. (Today, according to Statista, the top five gifts for consumers are: clothing, toys/hobbies, gift cards, and food.) One of the most cherished memories of those earlier times was visiting bookstores, especially used bookstores where holiday shoppers could delight in that wonderful, enchanting old book or bookstore smell. Any book lover knows what I am talking about — that initial blissful sight of countless stacks of books enriched by the aroma of old books. It’s hard to explain exactly — a bit of mustiness mixed with a hint of vanilla. A team of British chemists that tested the air surrounding old books using electronic sniffing equipment described the bouquet more precisely: “A combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness.” Bingo. This is of course, a very different smell than walking into a bookstore that sells new books. There, the bibliophile immediately detects the “new book smell.” So what exactly creates the unique scent of old books?

The scent of a book is created by four main factors: paper (and the chemicals used to make it), ink, adhesives used to bind the book, and to a minor degree environment (the smells that paper absorbs during its lifetime). Let’s start with the paper. Paper is made of would pulp that is processed with many chemicals during its manufacturing — sodium hydroxide, hydrogen peroxide, alkyl ketene dimer (AKD), among several others. These chemicals, through their presence or reactions, contribute to the release of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which produce unique odors. The same thing happens with the chemicals found in the ink to print the book (e.g., AKD and hydrogen peroxide) and the adhesives used to bind the book (e.g., vinyl acetate ethylene). Since new books have not absorbed much of their environment (e.g., cigar smoke, coffee, mold etc.), this is not a critical factor for new books.

When it comes to old books, things become far more interesting, chemically speaking. The most salient factor in “old book smell” is the chemical breakdown of compounds within paper due to the presence of acids in the environment. Researchers at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage at University College London were interested in studying the smells that are a part of our cultural heritage. The scientists write: “We don’t know much about the smells of the past. Yet, odors play an important role in our daily lives: they affect us emotionally, psychologically and physically, and influence the way we engage with history. Can this lead us to consider certain smells as cultural heritage? And if so, what would be the processes for the identification, protection and conservation of those heritage smells?… The smell of historic paper was chosen as the case study, based on its well-recognized cultural significance and available research.” The scientists found that the breakdown of cellulose and lignin produces eight classes of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) depicted in their “Historic Book Odor Wheel” that shows these eight unique scents: smoky/burnt; fragrant/fruity/vegetable/flowers; medicinal; fishy/rancid; chemical/hydrocarbons; earthy/musty/moldy; sweet/spicy; grassy/woody. More specifically, the researchers identified the unique aromas of these key VOCs: benzaldehyde creates an almond scent; vanillin creates a vanilla scent; 2-ethyl hexanol creates a slightly floral scent; and ethyl benzene and toluene create sweet scents. In fact, some compounds, like furfural (which smells like almond), can even be used to determine the age of a book. Unlike a new book, an old book’s paper has had time to absorb some environmental odors (e.g., smoke, coffee, etc.) that can add to its rich aroma.

A rich, nuanced, and evocative aroma like this deserves a proper name, doesn’t it? Enter Dr. Oliver Tearle, an English professor at Loughborough University (UK) and author of The Secret Library: A Book-Lover’s Journey Through the Curiosities of History. Teale, a true bibliophile and scholar, introduces us to the word “bibliosmia” derived from the Greek words biblio (meaning “book”) and osme (meaning “scent, smell, or odor”). He writes, “Clearly ‘bibliosmia’ names something which people feel is an important part of the reading experience, and something which Bradbury’s ‘burned fuel’ cannot provide. In the supposed age of the e-book, bibliosmia is one of the key weapons of the resistance.” By ‘burned fuel,’ Teale is referring to an oft-quoted remark made by Ray Bradbury at BookExpo America (New York City, May 2008): “There is no future for e-books, because they are not books. E-books smell like burned fuel.” Ironically, this is after his publisher, Simon & Schuster, announced that they would be making thousands of titles available for the Kindle — including Fahrenheit 451. Awkward.

Coming up with a word for the smell of old books was also the subject of a discussion on Facebook post back in 2017. A contributor named Arun Prasad (writing with the user name “The Bookoholics”) wrote: “The most commonly used word to describe the smell of old books is ‘musty.’ However, there’s no defined word yet. A bibliophile refers to the smell [of old books] by the word ‘bibliochor.'” Prasad explains that the word was inspired by the beautiful word petrichor (introduced by Australian mineral chemists in 1964; petrichor is defined as the distinctive smell associated with the first rainfall after a long dry period), a word that combines the Greek word-forming element biblio- (meaning “book,” derived from biblion meaning “paper, scroll”) and from the Modern Latin word ichor or Greek word ikhor (meaning “ethereal fluid that flows in the veins of the gods.”) So now, dear reader, you have beautiful, wonderful words to define that pleasant, intoxicating smell of old books: bibliosmia and bibliochor.

This invites the question: if they can make “new car smell” sprays, why can’t they make “old book smell” sprays? No company has actually tried and succeeded; it remains the elusive Holy Grail of the burgeoning ebook market. In an article for The Guardian titled “Old Spines — Why We Love the Smell of Secondhand Books,” David Shariatmadari introduces two perfumes that evoke the smell of a used bookstore: Paperback (made by Demeter) and Dzing! (made by L’Artisan Parfumeur). in their fascinating book, Perfumes: The A-Z Guide, perfume critics Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez discuss how lignin, a polymer that stops trees from drooping and is chemically related to the molecule vanillin, is the key ingredient in Dzing! that evokes that alluring old book smell. The authors elaborate, “When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good-quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us.”

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For further reading: interestingliterature.com/2017/07/on-the-science-of-bibliosmia-that-enticing-book-smell/
theguardian.com/fashion/shortcuts/2015/nov/25/old-spines-why-love-smell-of-secondhand-books-perfume
http://www.colorado.edu/libraries/2020/05/01/science-behind-smell-books-explained-preservation
doaj.org/article/891aa13d1caa455ea8703ea4953ecce8
http://www.gordostuff.com/2008/06/do-e-books-smell-like-burned-fuel.html
http://www.statista.com/statistics/246589/holiday-gifts-to-be-bought-by-consumers-by-item/
m.facebook.com/thebookoholics/photos/the-most-commonly-used-word-to-describe-the-smell-of-old-books-is-musty-however-/1383423145109246/

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

The Best Gift for Book Lovers: A Christmas Book Advent Calendar

12/03/2022 / Alexander Atkins

One of the most popular decorations in a home during the Christmas holiday season is the advent calendar. Advent calendars were introduced in Germany in the late 19th century. Since the birth of Christ is the most important date in the calendar for Christians, the advent calendar (from the Latin adventus, meaning “a coming or arrival”; in Church Latin it means “the coming of the Savior”) counts down the days until Christmas. Lutherans began by making chalk marks on their doors from December first to the 24th. There are two claims for the first advent calendar that bears some resemblance to the ones we see today: one claim is that protestant bookshop owner in Hamburg produced the first advent calendar. The other claim is that the mother of Gerhard Lang made the first advent calendar, cutting squares to reveal small sweets. Soon after, she added small doors adorned with pictures. By 1930, printers began printing advent calendars, often using biblical verses behind each door.

But a book lover is not that interested in sweets or biblical verses, or even sweet biblical verses. Moreover, everyone knows how challenging it is to shop for a book lover. Holiday shoppers meet the Christmas Book Advent Calendar: a basket (or box) filled with 25 gift-wrapped books about Christmas. Here are 25 classic literary works, modern novels, and anthologies that celebrate the spirit of Christmas, culminating in the greatest Christmas story of all time — Charles Dickens’ timeless novella, A Christmas Carol that has never been out of print. All these books are easy to find in paperback, hardback, or elegant leather-bound editions. Book lovers will be thrilled to count down to Christmas with these literary classics. Happy Holidays!

1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
2. Letters From Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien
3. A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote
4. The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
5. The Nutcracker by E.T.A. Hoffmann
6. Old Christmas by Washington Irving
7. The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern
8. A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
9. Christmas at Thompson Hall by Anthony Trollope
10. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum
11. A Christmas Story by Jean Shepherd
12. Miracle on 34th Street by Valentine Davies
13. Skipping Christmas by John Grisham
14. Silent Night: The Story of the WWI Christmas Truce by Stanley Weintraub
15. The Christmas Bookshop by Jenny Colgan
16. The Christmas Shoes by Donna VanLiere
17. The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans
18. The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories by Jessica Harrison
19. A Classic Christmas: A Collection of Timeless Stories and Poems by editors of Thomas Nelson
20. The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories by Tara Moore
21. A Treasury of African American Christmas Stories by Bettye Collier-Thomas
22. Christmas Stories (Everyman’s Pocket Classics) by Diana Secker Tesdell
23. The Autobiography of Santa Claus by Jeff Guinn
24. The Night Before Christmas by Nikolai Gogol
25. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

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

You May Not Know It, But You Are Quoting Shakespeare

11/30/202211/30/2022 / Alexander Atkins

alex atkins bookshelf shakespeare As many scholars have noted, Shakespeare had an enormous impact on the English language. In his book, The English Language (1929), British philologist Ernest Weekley (best known for his seminal work, An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English) wrote: “Of Shakespeare it may be said without fear of exaggeration that his contribution to our phraseology is ten times greater than that of any writer to any language in the history of the world.” What is astonishing is that due to the influence of his writing, people don’t even need to read Shakespeare to quote it. As Michael Macrone notes in Brush Up Your Shakespeare: An Infectious Tour Through theMost famous and Quotable Words and Phrases from the Bard, “Whether they knew it or not, people had been quoting Shakespeare piecemeal for hundreds of years. Indeed, we have derived from Shakespeare’s works an almost “infinite variety [Antony and Cleopatra] of everyday words and phrases, many of which have become so common that we think of them as “household words [Henry the Fifth].”

Of course, the question of the size of Shakespeare’s vocabulary has fascinated scholars for centuries. To answer that question, all scholars turn to The Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare by Martin Spevack (1968, 1974) based on the Riverside Shakespeare (G. Blakemore Evans, 1973). The concordance lists every word used in the published work of the Bard — a grand total of 884,647 words. Spevack also machine-counted 31,654 different words in 1968 and revised that to 29,066 different words in 1974. Using those numbers, different experts use different approaches to estimate the number or words that Shakespeare knew.

According to lexicographer and Shakespeare scholar David Crystal, the entire English vocabulary in the Elizabethan period consisted of about 150,000 words. Turning to the Harvard Concordance, Crystal notes that although Spevack machine-counted 29,066 unique words, that includes variant forms of words (eg, take, takes, taking, took, taken, takest) that are counted as different words. By removing those grammatical variants, the total of different words is reduced to 17,000 to 20,000. Therefore, Crystal believes that Shakespeare had a vocabulary of about 20,000 words (13.5% of the known lexicon). Compare that to the size of the vocabulary of the average modern person (high school-level education) that is 30,000 to 40,000 words (about 6% of the 600,000 words defined in the Oxford English Dictionary). Other lexicographers estimate that Shakespeare’s vocabulary ranged from 18,000 to 25,000 words.

But alas we digress — let us return to the original discussion of quoting Shakespeare even though we may not be aware of it. I was what recently exploring the maze of bookshelves at a quaint antiquarian bookstore and came across this poster, featuring the text of British journalist Bernard Levin [1928-2004], a fan of the Bard and one of the most famous journalists in England, that eloquently and succinctly makes this argument in a single sentence containing 369 words. The essay, titled “On Quoting Shakespeare,” appears in his book Enthusiasms, published in 1983.

ON QUOTING SHAKESPEARE

If you cannot understand my argument, and declare it’s Greek to me, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is father to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool’s paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you , for it is a foregone conclusion that you are,as good luck would have it, quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high timeand that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then – to give the devil his due – if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then – by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness’ sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! – it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.

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

How Every Book Lover Can Own Their Own Bookstore

11/24/202212/06/2022 / Alexander Atkins

alex atkins bookshelf books At one time or another, every book lover has thought about owning their own bookstore. What a dream job it would be — imagine opening up the bookstore’s front door each day and being greeted with that wonderful smell of books and walking through the neatly arranged bookshelves, their ornate covers beckoning “read me!” And each day you meet kindred souls, bibliophiles and ardent readers, so that you can share your passion for reading and collecting books. How fulfilling it would be to recommend books that will be meaningful and be treasured by the customers who visit your quaint bookstore.

I know what you are thinking. How can a every book lover own his or her own bookstore. Isn’t it really expensive to open a bookstore? Interestingly, bookstores have lower starting costs than other businesses. The biggest expense, as you can imagine, are rent and initial inventory. Consider that the average bookstore in the United States is 3,000 square feet; micro-bookstores and pop-up bookstores, on the other hand, use very little space: from 100 to 500 square feet. In general, opening a small bookstore (assuming the 3,000-square-feet size) will cost between $60,000 to $112,000. Opening a large bookstore will cost more than $400,00 to open. After rent and inventory, the largest expenses are furniture (sales counter and bookshelves), an inventory management system, and marketing expenses (website, signage, advertising, etc.). In an article for Forbes titled “How to Open an Independent Bookstore,” Rachel Bussel interviewed several people who had opened bookstores in 2018. One bookstore owner revealed that it took about ten months of work (writing a business plan, obtaining loan, searching retail locations, ordering books, etc.) to open up a bookstore. atkins-bookshelf-bookstore But what if I told you that for less than $50 you can own your bookstore? That’s right — you read that correctly: for under $50. Let me introduce you to an innovative company called Rolife. Rolife is a sub-brand of Robotime Technology (Suzhou) Co,. Ltd, based in Beijing, China, which is a toy company that designs and manufactures do-it-yourself wooden puzzles and educational toys for kids and adults. One of their products is the Miniature Bookstore that retails for about $40. The wooden model is built to 1:24 scale; when completed it will be about 7 x 8 x 9 inches. Unlike a real brick-and-mortar bookstore that will take almost a year to get off the ground, this miniature bookstore will take you about 15 hours to build. The bookstore includes bookshelves, shelf ladder, table, wingback reading chair, cabinets, wall decorations, signs — and of course, lots of books. The best part of this kit is that you can copy the kit’s photo or customize any of the elements to align with your dream bookstore. The miniature bookstore even features a working ceiling lamp which uses battery-powered LED lights. The kit materials include wood parts, cloth, printed paper, and metal fittings. In order to build the kit, you will definitely need some tools. Fortunately, the helpful folks at Rolife include tweezers and a paintbrush; however you will have to supply the glue and AAA batteries.

The miniature bookstore can be purchased on Amazon here.

Rolife also makes a smaller and simpler bookstore, called the Book Nook – Free Time Bookshop, seen here.

other kits that booklover’s would appreciate like the Book Nook – Sunshine Town, seen here.

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

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