Daily Archives: May 23, 2012

A Year in Books/Day 140: Evelyn Waugh

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2
  • Title: Evelyn Waugh The Later Years 1939-1966
  • Author: Martin Stannard
  • Year Published: 1992/This Edition: 1994 (W.W. Norton & Company)
  • Year Purchased: 2000?
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: I’m currently on a Bright Young Things reading binge; although it focuses on Waugh’s mature years, this book almost instantly came to mind. It is one of the better biographies present on my sagging shelves. A potent reminder that he was more than just the writer of Brideshead Revisited (which, if it came down to that, wouldn’t be such a bad thing), Stannard succeeds in making the complex yet usually unapproachable Waugh, for good and bad, seem human. It is a masterly work.
  • Motivation: I collect dead writer biographies like kids collect toys.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 170: “The delay in departure was all Waugh needed to fire his imagination. There was, he felt, a story in this about everything that had troubled him since leaving the army, and Scott-King’s Modern Europe was to be his revenge on his hosts.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9
    Portrait of Evelyn Waugh

    Portrait of Evelyn Waugh (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 139: Schott’s Original Miscellany

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  • Title: Schott’s Original Miscellany
  • Author: Ben Schott
  • Year Published: 2003 (Bloomsbury)
  • Year Purchased: 2004/2005
  • Source: Bas Bleu
  • About: If I decided to write a reference book, it would be in this mould: eccentric, far-reaching and a treat to read. The entries are ridiculously fun yet still informative (as, of course, all such books should be): Eponymous Foods, Hampton Court Maze, Public School Slang, The Language of Flowers, Churchill & Rhetoric, Proverbially You Can’t, Super Bowl Singers, George Washington’s Rules and The Bond Films are just a few. It is a little treasure of a volume, and one that suits those of us for whom so-called useless knowledge is one of life’s great enjoyments.
  • Motivation: We all know that I LOVE reference books. Of any kind. I also hanker after eclectic knowledge because, well, why not?
  • Times Read: Cover-to-cover:1/As reference tool: countless
  • Random Excerpt/Page 5: “An encyclopedia? A dictionary? An almanac? An anthology? A lexicon? A treasury? A commonplace? An amphigouri? A vade-mecum? Well…yes. Schott’s Original Miscellany is all of these and, of course, more.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10++