A Literary Book of Days
The perfect book with which to start any new year. You can use it as a diary but it also has literary entries for every day of the year so you could just refer to it daily for some snippets of information of a literary bent. It would make an unusual and thoughtful present for New Year's Day.
January 11th: 1963 Sylvia Plath committed suicide.
April 25th: 1826 Byron left England for exile in Europe / 1873 Walter de la Mare born.
August 10th: 1912 Virginia Stephen married Leonard Woolf.
There are also quotes on many days (sorry to get back to that theme again):
September 16th: 1926 Max Brand talking about writing Westerns "There has to be a woman but not much of one; a good horse is much more important."
August 22nd: 1893 Dorothy Parker born two or three months premature. She later said "It was the last time I was early for anything."
A rest from quotations
A Very Merry Christmas!
And yet more quotes
"I may be drunk, madam, but I will be sober in the morning and you will still be ugly."
In case you didn't know, that one comes from one of the best providers of quotes ever, Winston Churchill himself; the next from another quotable great, Mark Twain:
"Get your facts first and then you can distort them as you please."
And here are a few more greats: try and guess who said them and then check your Dictionary of Quotations to see if you were right.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
"If you have nothing good to say about anyone, come and sit by me."
"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort"
And more quotations
Just in case you haven't been in to buy that book of quotations yet, I thought I'd give you a couple more from one of my own favourite people to quote.
Dorothy Parker
"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."
“She can speak 18 languages but can't say no in any of them."
"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."
(She might not actually be responsible for this last one but I couldn't resist including it). You can all comment and tell me who it actually was. But you can no doubt see why she is one of my favourites. Get that book of quotes in time for Christmas
Quotations continued
With apologies to Martin Luther:
"Whoever drinks wine, he is quick to sleep; whoever sleeps long, does not sin; whoever does not sin, enters heaven! Thus, let us drink wine!"
In Martin Luther's version it was beer and not wine - but the substitution suited me and I am sure that anyone responsible for such a sentiment would forgive me.
It is marvellous how much can be said in so few words. Get yourself a book of quotations and enjoy other people's wit; especially useful if, like me, you don't have that gift yourself.
John Jones of Otago
We have an Association Copy which is inscribed, dated and signed by the author Alfred Eccles to his fellow New Zealand historian F.G. Hall-Jones. Some correspondence of John Hall-Jones (the son) is also loosely enclosed. You will never find anything like this anywhere else. A very special item with a not unreasonable price.
Just in case you are interested, the book is in pretty good condition and the dustjacket less so. There is moderate browning to the page edges, annotation to fep & to half-title page, and very slight foxing to the eps. The dustjacket has moderate browning to theedges, spine & flap folds, a 2cm closed tear to the upper spine, small nicks to the spine head, some small closed tears to the edges and moderate tanning inside.
Quotations
Virginia Woolff
Lovely, isn't it? Why not give a gift of lasting pleasure this Christmas - a book of quotations. You can't go wrong.
Rugby experts
Have you ever sat in the pub watching a rugby game watching a rugby game and been afraid to say anything in case you looked a bit of a fool? Would you like to sound as if you know what you're talking about without spending the next few years laboriously studying every game instead of just enjoying it? Would you like to sound well informed when drop-kicks, fly-hacks and punts are being discussed? Are you bemused by the difference between reverse passes, scissors, loops and spin passes? Then you need a copy of this book because it will allow you to sound erudite without doing more than enjoyably perusing this little volume:
Bluff Your Way in Rugby
by Alexander C Rae
You could browse in our sports section while you're here picking up a copy of the aforementioned!
