Monday, April 19, 2010

Such beauties.

The balance in the universe was today re-established as I bought three books. It's been quite a while since I last bought books, and shamefully enough I only bought one in France. But then I have also been too absent-minded lately to read, so I feel a bit stupid about buying books. Anyway, they are probably very good ones.



The quarrelsome seal that was eyeing a disenchanted but rather attractive fish that was jumping in and out of the icy water has picked a fight with a phlegmatic walrus that was innocently passing by.

Yes, I have already started reading "The Unfolding of Language", since it was recommended to me, and it has made me chuckle quite a couple of times, so I'm well pleased. I was actually just going into the book store in order to pass some time and to have a look at this book that I was thinking about buying, and then I saw that there was a "three for the price of two" sticker on it, and I had a look around to see if there was any other books that seemed highly interesting. When my eyes fell on Orlando Figes' book I just started looking for a third one in order to justify buying them. I have been reading, and very much enjoying, Figes' "A Cultural History of Russia" (I haven't actually finished it yet but it's never boring) so I am looking forward to reading his book about private life in Stalin's Russia.

Finally, the third book had "for people interested in language, this is a must" written on the back of it, and I recognized the title. Not a very difficult decision.

The book that I did actually buy in Paris (and I'm going to make a photo post about the trip as soon as I get the photos) was this one, and I guess you can see that there is a certain trend in the books I buy...


6 comments:

  1. My recent book purchases have been similarly linguistically themed: "The sociolinguistics of language" by Ralph Fasold and "Dire presque la meme chose" by Umberto Eco. I'll look into "The Unfolding of Language", it seems interesting -- I don't know much about evolutionary linguistics. Next on my list will probably be anything by Steven Pinker.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great! The Unfolding of Language seems very interesting (well...all the others as well!)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Recently I've heard quite a lot about Steven Pinker; he was mentioned at a lecture on generative grammar I attended and he's been a bit on TV here in Norway due to a "popular science" program dealing with nurture versus nature. He seems like such an inspiring guy and I definitely want to read something by him as well! Do keep me updated on any purchases you do, Damian :-)

    Strastnaya, the book is proving to be very interesting, even though it is written for Anglophone people with absolutely no knowledge of language. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Done, i´ve bought it in Amazon :P

    ReplyDelete
  5. At the moment I'm reading books about reading books :P "Ex libris" by Anne Fadiman and "Comme un roman" by Daniel Pennac. Both are fascinating and a must for bookworms such as ourselves ;)

    Lately I've been very into novels that have been made into movies. Depressive movies, as a matter of fact. And so after "Single man" (by Christopher Isherwood) and "Ensaio sobre a cegueira" (by José Saramago) I've got "Revolutionary road" (by Richard Yates) waiting patiently for me on my nightstand.

    Have to admit I'm also intrigued by "The unfolding of language". Amazon? :D

    ReplyDelete
  6. You just made me realize I really should read more! I know a perfect book that has been made into a movie, and the movie is actually one of my favorite movies ever - Schneeland. I just realized that now I can actually buy it, because it's a German movie and I have never been able to find it with subtitles after having seen it at the movie festival in my hometown (where the author of the book lived). Now that I'm studying German, that's no longer a problem! :)

    This is the (unavailable) book, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hohaj-Elisabeth-Rynell/dp/8374538945/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273519617&sr=8-10, and this is another one of her books, which I liked very much: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mervas-Elisabeth-Rynell/dp/0981987370/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273519617&sr=8-1

    Both are very depressive!

    ReplyDelete