Posted by Cori on November 25th, 2009 — Posted in Quotes from Books, Utterly Random
I was reading “The Intellectual Life” by P.G. Hamerton the other day, as you do. It’s a book of hypothetical letters to some imaginary friends around the theme of being a proper Victorian intellectual (it was published in 1873.) And in one essay, I was much amused to find an unexpectedly-modern usage of the term “level up”. On a brief rummage around the internet, I find a number of people arguing whether the term first came from D&D gaming or video games a couple of decades ago. I’m sure Hamerton’s can’t be the earliest usage, but perhaps fairly early, since it was printed in scare-quotes, to make people think through the meaning of the phrase. Hamerton is talking to his fantasy recipient about how hard it is to be a modern languages student, learning a language that other people speak natively. By contrast …
The classical student has only to contend against other students who are and have been situated very much as he is situated himself. They have learned Latin and Greek from grammars and dictionaries as he is learning them, and the only natural advantages which any of his predecessors may have possessed are superiorities of memory which may be compensated by his greater perseverance, or superiorities of sympathy to which he may “level up” by that acquired and artificial interest which comes from protracted application.
(Part III, Letter VIII of The Intellectual Life by Philip Gilbert Hamerton. archive.org free book link)
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Posted by Cori on May 9th, 2009 — Posted in Quotes from Books, Utterly Random
My original idea for this website was to create an Encyclopedia Piratica, hence the domain name. However, I never found the time and energy to do the vast amount of work required; too much time spent proof-reading and recording audiobooks. However, this weekend I’ve sat down and used a few different resources to pull together a listing of piratey works … which can now be found at:
http://piratelibrary.com/library.htm
This is a bit of a hotchpotch at the moment, since contemporary and modern works are mixed, as are fact and fiction, and sea pirates with thieves of other stripes. I’ve simply labelled books according to source. So it will evolve over time, and I hope it proves of use / fun to someone somewhere along the way.
Collections included so far:
Project Gutenberg
LibriVox
The Internet Archive
To come:
Google Books (the public domain ones, anyway)
Other free online sources of piratical text & audio as I find them
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Posted by Cori on January 31st, 2009 — Posted in About LibriVoxing, Quotes from Books, Utterly Random
My New Year Revolutions didn’t really get made this year, but I have some ideas in my head about numbers that I’d like to hit this year, including 100hrs of LibriVox recordings, something about posts, something about podcasts, something about blog posts.
I’m signed up to the One-Book-a-Week challenge again, but knowing the pace I normally read at, I’ve had a binge this month on short novels, and am currently have completed 10. Ha!
I also spruced up this website a little, adding actual widgets and Gargle Analytics. I’m not completely happy with them yet, I can feel a little tinkering with the CSS coming on, but still, close enough.
And finally, it was suggested to me that it might be much fun to Wordle the recordings I produce when I announce them here. Which is definitely a plan. I’ve already made the picture for the next (very short) piece I plan to record, which I know will have an audience of about one, assuming I listen to it myself. But perhaps that’s what Posterity is all about. Talking to ourselves and hoping mebbe someone else will want to overhear. We shall see.
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Posted by Cori on January 14th, 2008 — Posted in * My Recordings, Non-Fiction, Quotes from Books
Ah, it’s lovely to have archive.org behaving again … all sorts of long-ago recordings of mine are finding their way home, finally. Like my contribution to A Child’s History of England by Charles Dickens … I read the chapters England Under Richard the Second and England Under Henry the Fourth, Called Bolingbroke last June. Most of it is fairly straightforward prose, but Dickens does have occasional really splendid turns of phrase which remind me of the Horrible History books now … such as here, on greeting an unwanted visitor:
‘Fair cousin of Lancaster,’ said the King, ‘you are very welcome’ (very welcome, no doubt; but he would have been more so, in chains or without a head).
Get edumacated here: http://librivox.org/a-childs-history-of-england-by-charles-dickens/
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Posted by Cori on October 6th, 2007 — Posted in * My Recordings, Drama and Poetry, Quotes from Books, Solos
Ah, lovely Gertrude Stein!
From Bartleby.com:
By departing from conventional meaning, grammar and syntax, she attempted to capture “moments of consciousness,” independent of time and memory.
Or to put it another way, in Stein’s own words:
A steady cake, any steady cake is perfect and not plain, any steady cake has a mounting reason and more than that it has singular crusts. A season of more is a season that is instead. A season of many is not more a season than most.
It’s my cake day. I’m hoping my present to the world is going to be catalogued in time. It’s being proof-listened against the clock right now …
http://librivox.org/tender-buttons-by-gertrude-stein/
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Posted by Cori on September 28th, 2007 — Posted in * My Recordings, Book Reviews, Fiction, Quotes from Books, Utterly Random
My reading of the short story A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka, translated by Ian Johnston, has just been catalogued. Hunger artists are, of course, people who starve publically — in a performance sense, not a documentary-on-countries-with-famine sense. Linking getting thinner with getting the public’s attention has media-anorexia overtones, though masochism and traditional views of Starving Artists come into play too. Before recording, I read around the web a bit, and found this particularly good study guide. If you have a spare hour, the interest and some brain energy available, I’d recommend it. I ended up being particularly struck by the sadism of the voyeurs/audience who encourage the starving artist, but there are a lot of other ways to interpret the story, depending on your own world view.
One other thing, this is where people adding to the public domain are doing such an amazing service. The translator here has produced various other Kafka stories too (mostly also in the LibriVox catalogue) and they’re recent translations which makes them very readable and accessible. Without him, I’d know nothing about this story, and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to read it into the public domain myself. Many thanks, Ian.
Listen below … or visit the link above to download a higher-quality recording.
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64kbps, 29mins
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Posted by Cori on July 28th, 2007 — Posted in * My Recordings, Non-Fiction, Quotes from Books
In the Articles of War established for the government of the English Navy, in Art. 32, after providing with respect to this offence [sodomy] and other species of impurity that they “shall be punished with death” it is added without mercy. [...] Of all the offences of which a man in the maritime service can be guilty, burning a fleet, betraying it to the enemy and so forth, this is the only one which it was thought proper to exclude from mercy. The safety of the fleet and of the Empire were in the eyes of the legislator objects of inferior account in comparison with the preservation of a sailor’s chastity.
Offences against One’s Self by Jeremy Bentham (c. 1785) The passage above is from the section of notes for the essay.
(No offence intended to modern sailors of any leaning. Note, the essay is entirely concerned with the suggested decriminalisation of homosexual acts a very long time ago - and has nothing to do with children, its subtitle not withstanding.)
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Posted by Cori on May 12th, 2007 — Posted in Quotes from Books
From a Nineteenth C. book on the life and times of Shakespeare …
“The diminutive oaths, mentioned at the close of [a previous quote], were, unfortunately, considered as ornaments of conversation, and adopted by both sexes, in order to give spirit and vivacity to their language; a shocking practice, which seems to have been rendered fashionable by the very reprehensible habit of the Queen [Elizabeth I], whose oaths were neither diminutive nor rare; for it is said, that she never spared an oath in public speech or private conversation when she thought it added energy to either. After this example in the highest classes, we need not be surprised when Stubbes tells us, speaking of the great body of the people, that, ‘if they speake but three or four words, yet they must be interlaced with a bloudie oath or two.’”
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Posted by Cori on May 5th, 2007 — Posted in Quotes from Books
But who comes here? What is the meaning of these roars of laughter that greet the last mask who runs into the market-place? Why do all the women and children hurry together, calling up one another, and shouting with delight? What is this thing? Is it some new species of bird, thus covered with feathers and down? In a few minutes the little figure is surrounded by a crowd of boys and women, who begin to pluck him of his borrowed plumes, while he chatters to them like a magpie, whistles like a song-bird, croaks like a raven, or in his natural character showers a mass of funny nonsense on them, till their laughter makes their sides ache. The little wretch is literally covered with small feathers from head to foot, and even his face is not to be recognized. The women pluck him behind and before; he dances round and tries to evade their fingers. This is impossible; he breaks away, runs down the market pursued by a shouting crowd, is again surrounded, and again subjected to a plucking process. The bird must be stripped; he must be discovered. Little by little his back is bared, and little by little is seen a black jerkin, black stockings, and, wonder upon wonder! the bands of a canon. Now they have cleared his face of its plumage, and a cry of disgust and shame hails the disclosure. Yes, this curious masker is no other than a reverend abbé, a young canon of the cathedral of Mans! ‘This is too much–it is scandalous–it is disgraceful. The church must be respected, the sacred order must not descend to such frivolities.’ The people, lately laughing, are now furious at the shameless abbé and not his liveliest wit can save him; they threaten and cry shame on him, and in terror of his life, he beats his way through the crowd, and takes to his heels. The mob follows, hooting and savage. The little man is nimble; those well-shaped legs–qui ont si bien dansé–stand him in good stead. Down the streets, and out of the the town go hare and hounds. The pursuers gain on him–a bridge, a stream filled with tall reeds, and delightfully miry, are all the hope of refuge he sees before him. He leaps gallantly from the bridge in among the oziers, and has the joy of listening to the disappointed curses of the mob, when reaching the stream, their quarry is nowhere to be seen. The reeds conceal him, and there he lingers till nightfall, when he can issue from his lurking-place, and escape from the town.Such was the mad freak which deprived the Abbé Scarron of the use of his limbs for life. His health was already ruined when he indulged this caprice; the damp of the river brought on a violent attack, which closed with palsy, and the gay young abbé had to pay dearly for the pleasure of astonishing the citizens of Mans. The disguise was easily accounted for–he had smeared himself with honey, ripped open a feather-bed, and rolled himself in it.
The Wits and Beaux of Society, by Grace And Philip Wharton (1890).
We don’t have as much fun as they did in 1635, I reckon. Just on the offchance, though, do try donating a jar of honey to your local clergyperson. Let me know how they get on …
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Posted by Cori on April 28th, 2007 — Posted in Quotes from Books
My main feeling at the Durbar while I watched those splendid beasts–the crowds of camels, the crowds of elephants–all being driven along by the little, faint, dreamy, sleepy-looking people was, “Why don’t their elephants turn around on them and chase them?”I kept thinking at first that they would, almost any minute.
Our elephants chase us–most of us. Who has not seen locomotives coming quietly out of their roundhouses in New York and begin chasing people, chasing whole towns, tearing along with them, making everybody hurry whether or no, speeding up and ordering around by the clock great cities, everybody alike, the rich and the poor, the just and the unjust, for hundreds of miles around? In the same way I have seen, hundreds of times, motor cars turning around on their owners and chasing them–chasing them fairly out of their lives. And hundreds of thousands of little wood-and-rubber Things with nickel bells whirring, may be seen ordering around people–who pay them for it–in any city of our modern world.
Now and then one comes on a man who keeps a telephone, who is a gentleman with it, and who keeps it in its place, but not often.
Crowds: Gerald Stanley Lee (1913).
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