Blog Posts by Subject: Language and Literature

My hope is that this blog will serve as a useful starting point for anyone seeking or researching the origin of words and/or phrases, also called etymology. Both print-based and web-based sources are included.

For the week of July 8, 2012 we have hardcover fiction, hardcover non-fiction, and hardcover advice & misc.

For the week of July 1, 2012 we have hardcover fiction, hardcover non-fiction, and children's picture books.

For the week of June 24, 2012 we have hardcover fiction, hardcover non-fiction, and children's paperback books.

Please help PROTECT YOUR BRANCH nypl.org/speakout
It takes just seconds to sign a letter urging elected officials to reverse the harshest cut to The New York Public Library in its history. 

For the week of June 17, 2012 we have hardcover fiction, hardcover non-fiction, and paperback advice & misc. books.

Please help PROTECT YOUR BRANCH nypl.org/speakout
It takes just seconds to sign a letter urging elected officials to reverse the harshest cut to The New York Public Library in its history. 

For the week of June 10, 2012 we have hardcover fiction, hardcover non-fiction, and hardcover advice & misc. books.

Please help PROTECT YOUR BRANCH nypl.org/speakout
It takes just seconds to sign a letter urging elected officials to reverse the harshest cut to The New York Public Library in its history. 

For the week of June 3, 2012 we have hardcover fiction, hardcover non-fiction, and children's picture books.

Please help PROTECT YOUR BRANCH nypl.org/speakout
It takes just seconds to sign a letter urging elected officials to reverse the harshest cut to The New York Public Library in its history. 

For the week of May 27, 2012 we have hardcover fiction, hardcover non-fiction, and children's series.

Please help PROTECT YOUR BRANCH nypl.org/speakout
It takes just seconds to sign a letter urging elected officials to reverse the harshest cut to The New York Public Library in its history. 

For the week of May 20, 2012 we have hardcover fiction, hardcover non-fiction, and paperback trade fiction.

Please help PROTECT YOUR BRANCH nypl.org/speakout
It takes just seconds to sign a letter urging elected officials to reverse the harshest cut to The New York Public Library in its history. 

For the week of May 13, 2012 we have hardcover fiction, hardcover non-fiction, and hardcover advice & misc. books.

If you have an iPhone, iPad or Android phone, there is a free app! Use it with your library card/username and pin.

Click on any of the titles below and place a hold to request the item. Remember to update your contact information (phone number or e-mail address), so you are notified when the book 

Please help PROTECT YOUR BRANCH nypl.org/speakout
It takes just seconds to sign a letter urging elected officials to reverse the harshest cut to The New York Public Library in its history. 

For the week of May 6, 2012 we have hardcover fiction, hardcover non-fiction, and children's picture books.

If you have an iPhone, iPad or Android phone, there is a free app! Use it with your library card/username and pin.

Click on any of the titles below and place a hold to request the item. Remember to update your contact information (phone number or e-mail address), so you are notified when the book arrives for you 

For the week of April 29, 2012 we have hardcover fiction, hardcover non-fiction, and children's paperback books.

If you have an iPhone, iPad or Android phone, there is a free app! Use it with your library card/username and pin.

Click on any of the titles below and place a hold to request the item. Remember to update your contact information (phone number or e-mail address), so you are notified when the book arrives for you at your local library. Don't have a library card yet? It's simple! Find out how to get one. Titles are available in regular print, large print, audio, and in electronic format — for FREE!

For the week of April 22, 2012 we have hardcover fiction, hardcover non-fiction, and paperback trade fiction books.

If you have an iPhone, iPad or Android phone, there is a free app! Use it with your library card/username and pin.

Click on any of the titles below and place a hold to request the item. Remember to update your contact information (phone number or e-mail address), so you are notified when the book arrives for you at your local library. Don't have a library card yet? It's simple! Find out how to get one. Titles are available in regular print, large print, audio, and in electronic format — for FREE!

St. John Ervine was an English theatre critic in 1920s, '30s, writing often for Time and Tide, that remarkably sensible middle-class magazine which first featured the dry and sly E. M. Delafield's Diary of a Provincial Lady (reserve this book right away!). But I digress.

Thinking a great deal just now about the Great One, I thought of last years venture, April 11-15 2011.  It was a great deal of fun, and inspiration, and I felt great admiration for the Allen Room and Wertheim Study scholars who presented such fine work.  The week was audio-taped if you would like to listen to them, before you come to this year's lectures.

Since in less than a week you will have heard a terrific lecture incorporating and marmorializing [sic] Romeo and Juliet, I thought to prime the pump with a reprint of an earlier post: The Juliet Club by Suzanne Harper.  It is still one of my favorite, for joyous, books.

Its'a comin'.  Five presentations on Him.  At 1:15 in the South Court Auditorium at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. 

In the meantime, last night at the Columbia Shakespeare Seminar, a friend and I began to explore the idea of an anthology of poems about, not by, Shakespeare. What do you think?  Do you have one to contribute?  Should we create a blog? Facebook page? Create a pamphlet (how deliciously old-fashioned)? If you have a favorite poem about Shakespeare, please let me know.  One by favorite author, Sylvia Townsend Warner, follows.

It's coming up, 5 lectures from really smart people on the one and only Mr. William "Bard" Shakespeare.

Hamlet, Hamlet (redux) Taming of the Shew, The Winter's Tale and a super presentation on the Library's Shakespearean collections by our own Robert Armitage.

It's here again, featuring the one and only Robert Armitage, Humanities Bibliographer and Blogger Extraordinaire, and 4 cracker-jack scholars from the Wertheim Study.