What a beautiful first chapter to this new series!
In French, the noun "péripatéticienne" is an alternative (nicer?) way to say "prostitute." I had no idea where it came from (nor when I learned it. I probably came across it back when I was a teenager trying to avoid insults.) Reading your article made me dig into it and it now makes a lot more sense!
I used to keep my books as pristine as possible but I loved to dig into dictionaries to understand words I didn't know as a child. I had three different dictionaries (received from my brother) and seeing the differences in the ways to explain them felt like an adventure in itself.
On the rabbit hole feature, your tickled my curiosity too much and I ended up reading up and listening to tons of black midi today. What a beautiful way to push creativity in music to a whole new level.
Hi Mathias, thanks for the nice words about the new series! As for the rabbit hole - some of those videos get a little crazy, but they are fun to watch. I don't think I've found the end of that rabbit hole, I just got as far as I could until I ran out of time.
Well, you brought back memories of me asking my parents what a word meant and my father always telling me to “Go look it up!” in the massive dictionary that stood on its own stand in our entry.
Now I must admit, when I am reading a printed book, I have the urge to tap the word I don’t know or am curious to learn more about. I pretty much decided not to stop and google those though, as that kind of takes me away from the joy of a book in hand…
"that kind of takes me away from the joy of a book in hand"
Exactly! Let me ask, though, were you ever the type to read with a pencil tucked behind your ear so you could underline new words and come back to them later? I started doing that in college, but only for academic work, never in a novel (especially not a novel I had paid for!)
Never did that, probably because I didn’t give myself permission to write in books until later in life. Now I adore highlighting and writing in books.. Makes me feel intimate with them.
The book I am reading now I picked up off the street here in Basel (we regularly share what we finish with by leaving it on the street side window sill) and it has pencil circled words. I wonder if someone learning English was reading it. The words are mostly known to me but definitely not in everyday usage.
Right after I commented about not googling words, I did. A scrofulous building? Had to look. シ
"we regularly share what we finish with by leaving it on the street side window sill"
This is a fantastic custom. Years and years ago, I sometimes participated in something called Book Crossing (dot com) which seems like a higher tech version of the same thing. You'd get an ID from the site to paste in the book and then track it as it crossed the world. I left a few around Tokyo and got told off by the cops for doing so. :(
What a beautiful first chapter to this new series!
In French, the noun "péripatéticienne" is an alternative (nicer?) way to say "prostitute." I had no idea where it came from (nor when I learned it. I probably came across it back when I was a teenager trying to avoid insults.) Reading your article made me dig into it and it now makes a lot more sense!
I used to keep my books as pristine as possible but I loved to dig into dictionaries to understand words I didn't know as a child. I had three different dictionaries (received from my brother) and seeing the differences in the ways to explain them felt like an adventure in itself.
On the rabbit hole feature, your tickled my curiosity too much and I ended up reading up and listening to tons of black midi today. What a beautiful way to push creativity in music to a whole new level.
Hi Mathias, thanks for the nice words about the new series! As for the rabbit hole - some of those videos get a little crazy, but they are fun to watch. I don't think I've found the end of that rabbit hole, I just got as far as I could until I ran out of time.
Well, you brought back memories of me asking my parents what a word meant and my father always telling me to “Go look it up!” in the massive dictionary that stood on its own stand in our entry.
Now I must admit, when I am reading a printed book, I have the urge to tap the word I don’t know or am curious to learn more about. I pretty much decided not to stop and google those though, as that kind of takes me away from the joy of a book in hand…
"that kind of takes me away from the joy of a book in hand"
Exactly! Let me ask, though, were you ever the type to read with a pencil tucked behind your ear so you could underline new words and come back to them later? I started doing that in college, but only for academic work, never in a novel (especially not a novel I had paid for!)
Never did that, probably because I didn’t give myself permission to write in books until later in life. Now I adore highlighting and writing in books.. Makes me feel intimate with them.
The book I am reading now I picked up off the street here in Basel (we regularly share what we finish with by leaving it on the street side window sill) and it has pencil circled words. I wonder if someone learning English was reading it. The words are mostly known to me but definitely not in everyday usage.
Right after I commented about not googling words, I did. A scrofulous building? Had to look. シ
"we regularly share what we finish with by leaving it on the street side window sill"
This is a fantastic custom. Years and years ago, I sometimes participated in something called Book Crossing (dot com) which seems like a higher tech version of the same thing. You'd get an ID from the site to paste in the book and then track it as it crossed the world. I left a few around Tokyo and got told off by the cops for doing so. :(