My current reading experience, with which I am completely captivated, is Victor Hugo’s classic: Les Misérables, the unabridged edition, no less. I haven’t quite finished it yet (on page 980 of 1,463), but I am very impressed with his vocabulary and originality of thought and phrase. Victor Hugo is a cut above all. Above Patrick O’Brian, Alexandre Dumas, Fyodor Dostoyevosky, or any one I’ve read.
Commas are disappearing, according to this article. I was taught that a comma was a little pause in the flow of a sentence to let the reader catch his breath or scratch an itch. Our fast-paced lives need more than a few commas, it seems to me.
I don’t have time to digest this interesting article in the Online Economist, so I’ll just link to it here for you to read (and comment, I hope).
After reading the first page of Bryan Caplan’s book, I just might want to read the rest. I don’t know that I agree with him, but he may be on to something.
It was in late December, 1812, at the beginning of The American War. The the almost new frigate, USS Constitution, took and burned the English frigate HMS Java off the coast of San Salvador. How do I know all this stuff?
My reading on this icy morning turned up this delightful verse:
More than two years ago I started construction of Pride of Baltimore II, a 1/64 scale model of a fast sailing schooner of the type known as a Baltimore Clipper. The original Pride ruled the waves from 1805 to 1815, the precursor of the Clipper ship era of the 1850s. An authentic replica of the [...]
As the anniversary of 9/11 approaches, everyone is putting on their wise-retrospective beanies and pontificating about the significance of the twin-towers attack. Now it’s my turn, but first read this: Guardian WatchBlog Five years ago, I cared for little outside my own circle of friends and family. Caring was for fools and patriotism mostly nostalgic [...]
One of the few devotional periodicals worth reading is Tabletalk from Ligonier Ministries. This month’s issue is about “Proud Mediocrity: Facing the addiction of our culture.” But never mind. All I want to do is to pass on a couple of striking (to me, for obvious reasons,) quotations to those who collect such things. The [...]
Some years ago my imagination was captured by reading about the short Age of Sail, when Napoleon was the Bad Guy du jour, and the Royal Navy ruled the seas. In particular it was the Aubrey-Maturin novels written by Patrick O’Brian, full of authentic detail about frigates and ships of the line that interested me. [...]
