Newsletter Week of 2 October 2020
Yesterday Thomas and I, along with our friend Betsy, went to the annual Historical Society used book sale. It was held outside, in a parking lot, and was a pretty standard used book sale: rows of tables bearing cardboard boxes of old books. Everyone was masked, and there was plenty of room for social distancing.
Shortly after we arrived, I heard an exchange between a couple. One said, "Did you see anything you want?" and the other answered, "Well, they're books, so I want them all." I gave a thumbs-up and laughed.
There's a special joy to used book sales. Everyone prowls through boxes looking for unexpected treasures. The nicest thing is, everyone's concept of "a treasure" is different. A mid-20th century children's book of dog stories...a pair of joke books aimed at elementary school kids...a beloived book from childhood...a book with a sweet inscription or marginal notes...an odd historical novel about prehistoric cave painters...all are treasures to someone.
I started working at the local library in 1974, when I was 16. For about six years I re-shelved books; I got to know just about every book on the loibrary's shelves. Because of this, I have a particular weakness for books, especially popular fiction, from around the mid-1950s on. I can usually resist picking up the likes of Jean Plaidy, Victoria Holt, Phyllis Whitney, Alastair MacLean, and Mary Stewart—although they always make me smile—but it's harder to resist more obscure authors. I'll almost always pick up books by Gladys Taber, Mazo de la Roche, and Ngaio Marsh...although yesterday I had the willpower to resist two R.F. Delderfield titles. (My mother was a big reader, which is why this list skews in the direction of historical romance and family sagas.)
We came home with a fine assortment of 18 books, for which they wanted to charge us $17—but we forced $20 on them, the absolute minimum I will spend at fundraising sales.
- Ripped 9 more DVDs to mp4
- Finished & published new paperback edition of The Leaves of October
- Began work on new Star Toys Museum website, to be public Real Soon Now
- Legion of Super-Heroes website: started cataloging comics from 1999
- Wrote & posted Rule of Five episode 3.01
- Finished & submitted Analog column for Jan/Feb 2021
Thomas becomes a Beaker Person - ordered from Andrew Ketley Artisan Potter
I've beenm spending a lot of time on Facebook lately, and I want to help clear up a big misconception.
We're all familiar with the notion that spoken English and written English are so different that they might as well be separate langauges. Since the discourse in social media is in written form, we tend to assume that it's written Engloish—but it isn't. Social media discourse is a form of spoken English. And we do everyone (including ourselves) a disservice when we confuse the two.
Let's look at spelling. Folks of my generation (aka "old farts") get nearly apoplectic over online spelling, like using "there" in place of "their" or "they're," "to" instead of "too," and similar homophone errors. (The phrase "kids these days" and "ignorant of grammar" turn up frequently.) Thing is, us old farts are wrong.
In spoken English, there's no such thing as homophones. "Their," "there," and "they're" all sound the same when spoken. Meaning is (usually) clear from context. In social media discourse, spelling doesn't matter—it's the sound of the word that matters.
If it helps, imagine that the person you're reading on social media composed their post using voice-to-text—or imagine that you're hearing the words rather than reading them.
In a way, this model is a return to the early days of reading and writing, before the printing press. In those times, writing was strictly a process of transcribing speech, and reading was strictly a process of re-creating that speech. In the Middle Ages, Alcuin of York was considered the smartest person in the world because he had mastered the trick of reading without moving his mouth. At the time, there was no such thing as reading silently. Reading necessarily involved vocalizing.
It wasn't until reading became a widespread skill that spelling was standardized (which is why Shakespeare, for example, spelled his own name several different ways). Now, in social media, we're seeing a resugence of that model. This isn't a bad thing (or a good thing)...it's just the way things work.