Book End

Learned Vol. 4, Issue 52

This week:  Book.  Read it, write it, open it up, close it out, book it.  We discuss the many permutations of the humble book.  Then we’ve got some information about the next Volume of Learned and a sneak peak at the forthcoming Learned Color Spectacular No. 2.  Let’s get to it.

Book It

Over the past year, we’ve looked at the words we use when we talk about words, but we’ve held the most all-encompassing word¹ about words for last:  book.

Relatable.

Now, this may be a shock to you, Reader, but I’m a bit of a bibliophile.  I started reading early and have never really stopped.  As a teen I would haunt the back shelves of my local used bookshop just looking for…well, just looking, really.  Didn’t matter what I was looking for, I would find something.  Because I love books in both the physical and metaphysical senses of the word.  They are both objects to revere and collections of ideas and experiences both real and imagined.  They are…hard to define.  Because book is an old, old word.

Here’s a brief (poetic²) history from The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins:

Smooth- skinned beech trees have always been the favorite of lovers carving their names or initials inside a heart. The outer bark of the beech and slabs of its thin, inner bark were also the first writing materials used by Anglo-Saxon scribes. Saxons called the beech the boc and also applied this name to their bound writings made from slabs of beech, the word becoming book af- ter many centuries of spelling changes…

And like so many old words, it has acquired meanings and nuances far beyond its original use.  Merriam-Webster lists 21 definitions for the noun entry alone.  But, this definition from the Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory sums a lot of them up rather nicely:

A book is either a written document or a record; or a written or printed literary composition. It may also be a volume of accounts or notes. It has a further meaning when it denotes a sub- division of a work…

But even that doesn’t really get at why they mean so much to me.  It can’t.

One of my favorite possessions is a book called Things Seen in Japan.  It is a travelog written by English journalist Clive Holland in 1907.  It’s a fun read, especially if you’re at all familiar with modern Japan.  But, more than that, it’s a collection of experiences I relate to from someone who died a decade and a half before I was born.  To realize that we share experiences across a hundred years and vast cultural differences³ is an incredible thing.  And yet, it’s just words printed on old paper sandwiched between cardboard covers, right?

Try another example - my favorite novel of all time, hands down, is The Swiss Family Robinson.  I do not currently even have a physical copy of the book.  But I’ve got four different digital versions, each from a different translation.  I’ve spent hours reading them against each other, with different versions open in different windows, marveling at how different translators changed and inflected each version with their own biases and constraints and yet how none of them lost the power to spark my imagination the same as it did when I was six years old.

Or how about The Martian Chronicles, a book that taught me it was okay to mourn fictional characters as if they were real because to me, they were?  Or Richard Bach’s Illusions, a book that helped me explore the metaphysical and determine if there was anything there for me?  Or Einstein’s Dreams which taught me to look beyond the why of physics and to look instead for the why not?  Or how about any of the dozens of favorites I’ve read and re-read over the years, taking them down off the shelf and toasting them as old friends?  How do you convey any of that in the simple word book?

So we invent a whole dictionary’s worth of words to describe the collection and arrangement of words.  We call them essays and articles.  We say they’re made up of phrases and sentences and paragraphs, and we assign them classifications like picaresque and burlesque and bildungsroman.  We commercialize and advertise them, we archive and store them.  Sometimes, we even read them.

To my mind, words are what make us people. They are what enable us to think beyond the moment and beyond the physical. They are the end product of our communicative abilities; other animals communicate through sound and through touch and sight and scent, as do we, too. But we alone among all the animals communicate through distinct words. And when we write them down, when we compile them into books, we are communicating the entire vast experience of being human in a way no animal could hope to achieve. And so, books are so much more than just a collection of words. Instead, books are what we do best - think, dream, wish, hope, grieve, mourn, love, hate, and learn.

And with that, we’ll close the book on Volume 4 of Learned. Thanks for coming along during the past year of discussing the words we talk about when we talk about words, I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

Stay curious,

J

Say It Again But Slowly

English has a lot of words⁴.  Like, more than Spanish and French put together a lot*.  And, of course, it’s impossible to know them all.  Which is a problem because English not only adds new words all the time, it likes to re-purpose old ones, just for kicks.  And then there are the vast, specialized jargons containing all kinds of arcane words that pop up whenever a given crisis brings that field to the fore, making us all hit the books once again to find out just what people are talking about⁵.

That’s what Volume 5 of Learned is all about - the words we come across from the news, from fiction, from youth culture (slang), or from somewhere else entirely that we just don’t know.  Each week, we’ll take a look at one word that I have stumbled over in my reading and we’ll talk about what the word means, where it comes from, and why it’s worth knowing.

The newsletter’s format and design are being updated for the changeover, but, the great thing is, if you’re already subscribed, either to the free or paid versions of this newsletter, you don’t need to do anything.  You’ll get the same weekly newsletter on Monday evening (Japan time) that you do now.  I’m looking forward to it and I hope you are, too.

Learned Volume 5:  Say It Again, But Slowly debuts next week.  Thank you so much for reading.

Nomenclature

Learned is, by and large, a free newsletter.  But every couple of months I put together a longer, special issue of Learned called the Color Spectacular.  The March / April edition will be hitting inboxes soon.  If you’d like to receive this and other special issues, please consider becoming a paid subscriber by clicking the button below.  As for what we’ll discuss in that upcoming special issue…

Names are a strange thing.  Part descriptor, part stand-in, part designation, they carry a lot of weight with them, never more so than when we have the task of assigning them:  If you’re naming a child, do you use a common name or an unusual one?  One that people know how to pronounce?  One they can spell?  What if it’s a pet you’re naming?  Do you use a human name or a “fuzzy” name?  How about your houseplants?  Do you name them?⁶  Your car?  Your house?  Your server farm?

Back in 1982, I played soccer for my town’s intracity league.  I didn’t really care for it.  And, honestly, the second practice was over, I quit thinking about it.  Which is why I was totally unprepared when Coach asked us for our suggestions for a team name.  I quickly scanned the school grounds looking for inspiration.  Finally, I shrugged and said, “The Crickets?”  The other boys laughed, Coach shook his head, and I went back to cloud gazing.

Twenty years later, I had my first computer system just for me.  No library or school computers.  No borrowing my roommates laptop.  This was all mine, no sharing at all.  And during set up it asked if I wanted to name the computer.  Hell yes I did.  Not only did I have the name of this computer picked out, I had the names of it’s external drive, my flash drive, and my iPod all set up in a matching scheme.  This time, I was ready…

The Last Word

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1. literally

2. Seriously, the author of this book - Robert Hendrickson - took great pains to liven up his encyclopedia beyond the somewhat dry nature of the subject whenever possible.  That’s one of the main reasons it has become one of my go-to books about words.

3. To be clear, by cultural differences, I mean the Holland’s and my own.

4. Over a million, by some counts.

5. French, 130K / Spanish, 150K

6. Anything other than Robert, I beg you.