Quotations Weblog

Sheldon Comics wrote about Shakespeare and how many words he coined:

• Sheldon: Shakespeare Part 1

• Sheldon: Shakespeare Part 2

There is a book about the subject called Coined by Shakespeare: Words and Meanings First Penned by the Bard by Stanley Malless and Jeffrey McQuain. If you would like a taste of the words he introduced to the English language, here is a brief list:

Nouns:
accused, addiction, alligator, amazement, anchovies, assassination, backing, bandit, bedroom, bump, buzzers, courtship, critic, dauntless, dawn, design, dickens, discontent, embrace, employer, engagements, excitements, exposure, eyeball, fixture, futurity, glow, gust, hint, immediacy, investments, kickshaws, leapfrog, luggage, manager, mimic, misgiving, mountaineer, ode, outbreak, pageantry, pedant, perusal, questioning, reinforcement, retirement, roadway, rumination, savagery, scuffles, shudders, switch, tardiness, transcendence, urging, watchdog, wormhole, zany

Verbs:
besmirch, bet, blanket, cake, cater, champion, compromise, cow, denote, deracinate, dialogue, dislocate, divest, drug, dwindle, elbow, enmesh, film, forward, gossip, grovel, hobnob, humour, hurry, impedes, jet, jig, label, lapse, lower, misquote, negotiate, numb, pander, partner, petition, puke, rant, reword, secure, submerge, swagger, torture, unclog

Adjectives:
aerial, auspicious, baseless, beached, bloodstained, blushing, circumstantial, consanguineous, deafening, disgraceful, domineering, enrapt, epileptic, equivocal, eventful, fashionable, foregone, frugal, generous, gloomy, gnarled, hush, inaudible, invulnerable, jaded, juiced, lackluster, laughable, lonely, lustrous, madcap, majestic, marketable, monumental, nervy, noiseless, oscene, olympian, premeditated, promethean, quarrelsome, radiance, rancorous, reclusive, remorseless, rival, sacrificial, sanctimonious, softhearted, splitting, stealthy, traditional, tranquil, unmitigated, unreal, varied, vaulting, viewless, widowed, worthless, yelping

Adverbs:
importantly, instinctively, obsequiously, threateningly, tightly, trippingly, unaware

There are so many words on that list that it just amazes me. How did they even speak without these words?

Miranda July created an entertaining website to promote her book, No One Belongs Here More Than You. You can see it here:

• No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July

I was so charmed by the website that I ordered the book without knowing anything else about the writer except that she was willing to write on her appliances to advertise her book.

The book is a quick read and I highly recommend you visit your local library and check it out. Be warned, however, the title of the book should have been: Miranda July’s Collection of Disturbing Little Stories.

Unshelved did a review of The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci (Author), Jim Rugg (Illustrator) a few months ago.

• Unshelved comic strip – The Plain Janes

I like the idea of a girl who doesn’t want to hang out with the cool kids and spends more time with the artsy and smartsy girls. I didn’t do nearly enough of that when I was in high school. I tried so hard to be popular.

In the end, my best friends are the people who stuck with me no matter how popular (or not) I was. I am still friends with them to this day. I wish I had spent more time hanging with them in the computer lab and less time avoiding date rape at the drunken football parties.

The first in the Hungry City Chronicles, Mortal Engines by Phillip Reeve looks like a great book. It was featured on Unshelved a couple of months ago.

• Unshelved comic strip – Mortal Engines

If you can imagine London as a moving city that chases towns, consuming them for energy and power to move across the planet, then this just might be the series for you.

Here are a few reviews from Amazon:

“I really like this book because it built suspense in every chapter and it was nerve racking. I would recommend it to fans of science fiction and fantasy because I’m a fantasy fan and I loved this book”

“‘…the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried bed of the old North Sea.’ This is up there on my list of favorite book beginnings. You jump right into the idea that cities are now on tractor wheels and have to migrate to find resources to stay alive. Or another way of putting it is that cities chase small towns and eat them. How cool is that? The basic idea is really fun – one con is that there are quite a few characters, sometimes hard to keep track of who is doing what. Still, I was sorry when the story finished and quite grateful for the sequel.”

After consuming the final Harry Potter book, I’m ready for a new series of fantasy books set in Great Britain. This one sounds right up my alley.

Back in June, Unshelved did a comic on P. G. Wodehouse’s Summer Moonshine:

• Unshelved comic strip – Summer Moonshine by P. G. Wodehouse

There were many times when I saw P. G. Wodehouse books at the library and the bookstore. They are considered classics. Based on the cover alone, I decided that they might be interesting, but they weren’t for me.

Maybe it’s because the covers make the Wodehouse books look so interminably boring. Summer Moonshine isn’t available on Amazon right now, but the Jeeves books are still in print. Even though the Jeeves books became a very popular British television series, I STILL didn’t want to read any Wodehouse books.

After seeing the Unshelved interpretation of the novel, I’m suddenly interested. Since I can’t get one at Amazon, I guess I’ll have to hunt it down at my local library.

Update: Although this one is still under copyright, we do have some other Wodehouse works online at the Literature Page:

• Literature Page: P. G. Wodehouse