Category Archives: books & writing

be an instant writer!

03 Thursday May 2007

Posted by in books & writing, fun stuff, humour, language, weird

≈ 13 Comments

writer.jpg

Just add water . . .

Okay, not really. Just add random words to Crazy Libs original or classic stories and get your own personalized version. Here’s one of mine…

The Fishing Incident

One minute I went fishing — fishing invariably makes me nervous. Most people like to fish in streams, but I, in my wit, like to fish in rivers. Standing quickly, I baited the hook with a handbag (and a couple of silky waffles for good measure), leaned back, and lavishly cast my fishing shoelace. I waited for a whole millennium, whispering to relieve the boredom, when finally a gurgle caught my attention. Sarcastically, I pulled and waddled on my fishing shoelace, straining until my last ounce of arrogance was gone, and reeled in my catch.

I was creeped out. There, lying before me like a sneaky frying pan on a meerkat’s toenail, was a giant screwdriver. As if that weren’t scary enough, the screwdriver, to my utmost stamina, started to sigh.

Cheesily, I dropped my fishing shoelace and ran back to my castle, without looking back. I don’t know when I’ve been so ecstatic.

How about adding one of yours?

~ thumbnail pic created by Amy the Ant ~

wordsmith

27 Friday Apr 2007

Posted by in books & writing, language, miscellany

≈ 9 Comments

aeiou.gif

Have you ever heard of Wordsmith?

Wordsmith.org is a worldwide online community of some half-million readers who share a love for words, wordplay, language, and literature. They hail from Australia to Zimbabwe and almost all other places in between.

One of my favourite services that they offer is A.Word.A.Day, which sends you a new word every day by email, along with background information and also a daily quotation. Usually the words for the week are chosen around a theme. This week’s theme was rather cool: words having vowels aeiou once and only once, and in order. Which include the following:

  • abstemious
  • caesious
  • anemious
  • facetious
  • annelidous

Can you think of any others?

secret? what secret?

26 Thursday Apr 2007

Posted by in books & writing, health & happiness, media, rants, video, weird

≈ 6 Comments

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Decoding ‘The Secret’

Oprah lives by it. Millions are reading it. The latest self-help sensation claims we can change our lives by thinking. But this ‘new thought’ may just be new marketing.

Reading some of the excerpts in the Newsweek article, you’d almost think it was a spoof book if not for the millions of copies sold and the public support of celebs like Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres and Nicole Kidman. Are people really so desperately needy and pathetically gullible? The mind reels …

You’d think the last thing Americans need is more excuses for self-absorption and acquisitiveness. But our inexhaustible appetite for “affirmation” and “inspiration” and “motivation” has finally outstripped the combined efforts of Wayne Dyer, Anthony Robbins, Dr. Phil and Mitch Albom. We have actually begun importing self-help—and from Australia, of all places, that citadel of tough-minded individualism…

misery lit

17 Tuesday Apr 2007

Posted by in books & writing, culture, health & happiness, life stuff, media

≈ 8 Comments

misery.jpg Misery lit… read on

Waterstone’s now has a “Painful Lives” shelf which features the newest such examples; Borders has a “Real Lives” section.

What lies behind the speedy rise of the “misery memoir”? Is the popularity of these books a healthy sign that Britons are shaking off their stiff upper lips and finally talking out loud about painful events? Or is there an element of voyeurism, even salaciousness, in the snapping up of such memoirs?

I’m of two minds about this new ‘misery lit’ phenomenon. First of all, I do believe it can help people who have been abused to read about others who have gone through similar experiences – reading Alice Miller’s Drama of the Gifted Child when I was in my 20’s helped turn my life around at that time.

But having a section in a bookshop called “Painful Lives”??? Is it just me or is that more than somewhat cringemaking? And beyond the suggested elements of voyeurism or salaciousness involved in buying these books, what about the author’s ‘jumping on the abuse victim bandwagon and laughing all the way to the bank’ element?

odd book title award

15 Sunday Apr 2007

Posted by in books & writing, humour, media, weird

≈ 8 Comments

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Trolley book wins odd title prize

A book titled The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification has been named as the oddest book title of the year.
Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Dagestan came second, with Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence in third place.
Other runners-up include How Green Were the Nazis? and D Di Mascio of Coventry – An Ice Cream Company of Repute, With An Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans.

A selection of past winners:

High Performance Stiffened Structures
Living with Crazy Buttocks
How To Avoid Huge Ships
The Joy of Chickens
Re-using Old Graves
Highlights in the History of Concrete

It’s hard to pick a favourite, isn’t it? 🙂