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Confessions of a Book-Lover

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“I am of the company of book men who read simply for the love of it,” confesses E. Walter Walters, in this gently written tome. Walters documents his habit of “book fishing–” seeking and finding quality volumes in the discount binds at his booksellers, and as a connoisseur of wine might match varieties with courses, he matches his books with the contexts in which he reads them–in the garden, in the bedroom, with friends. He also provides a list of his favorite authors (mostly 19th century United Kingdom) and favorite books, as well as favorite characters from the books he has read, not in a way to impose his choices on other readers, but to share his own personal experiences. (summary by Dr. P. Gould)

Cratylus

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Cratylus (????????) discusses whether things have names by mere convention or have true names which can only be correctly applied to the object named and may have originated from God. (Summary by Geoffrey Edwards)

The American Language

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“It was part of my daily work, for a good many years, to read the principal English newspapers and reviews; it has been part of my work, all the time, to read the more important English novels, essays, poetry and criticism. An American born and bred, I early noted, as everyone else in like case must note, certain salient differences between the English of England and the English of America as practically spoken and written?differences in vocabulary, in syntax, in the shades and habits of idiom, and even, coming to the common speech, in grammar. And I noted too, of course, partly during visits to England but more largely by a somewhat wide and intimate intercourse with English people in the United States, the obvious differences between English and American pronunciation and intonation. Greatly interested in these differences?some of them so great that they led me to seek exchanges of light with Englishmen?I looked for some work that would describe and account for them with a show of completeness, and perhaps depict the process of their origin. I soon found that no such work existed, either in England or in America?that the whole literature of the subject was astonishingly meagre and unsatisfactory.” – Summary by Mencken (Preface)