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‘The stocking filler of the season.’ Robert McCrum on The Etymologicon in the Observer
Posted on 2011/11/13 in General, tagged as
Robert McCrum, left, associate editor of the Observer, has some high praise for Mark Forsyth’s book today. ‘The Etymologicon (the word is Milton’s) links sausages and botulism, testicles and the Bible, even Bikini Atoll and Godzilla,’ he writes. ‘In 250 pages crammed with cross-references, this inky fool has given the nation’s quizzers the stocking filler of the season. How else to describe a book that explains the connection between Dom Pérignon… Read more »
‘This authoritative account of the Cold War arms race.’ The Dead Hand reviewed in Sunday Telegraph
Posted on 2011/11/11 in General, tagged as
The paperback of David E. Hoffman’s Pulitzer Prize winning The Dead Hand was reviewed briefly in the Sunday Telegraph last weekend: ‘Reagan and Gorbachev emerge vividly in this authoritative account of the Cold War arms race that offers disquieting evidence of Soviet weapons parts left unmonitored and unguarded post-glasnost.’ It’s one of the best books Icon have ever published and it’s in paperback now – more details here.
‘I was hooked.’ Matthew Parris selects The Etymologicon as a Book of the Year in the Spectator
Posted on 2011/11/11 in General, tagged as
Matthew Parris, left – who has already made his love of the book clear in his column in The Times – elects The Etymologicon as one of his Books of the Year in the Spectator today: ‘‘What,’ asks the blurb for The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth (Icon, £12.99), ‘is the actual connection between disgruntled and gruntled? What links church organs to organised crime, California to… Read more »
Why sex is secretly food
Posted on 2011/11/10 in General, tagged as
‘Freud said that everything was secretly sexual,’ Etymologicon author Mark Forsyth writes on the We Love This Book website. ‘But etymologists know that sex is secretly food.’ Read more of that piece here, and, on the same site, a piece here about the surprisingly mix-up between black and white, and how almost every word in the English language derives from shah…
A video about ‘video’
Posted on 2011/11/09 in General, tagged as
Mark Forsyth has recorded this below for Waterstones.com, a short video all about the word … ‘video’:
‘I freakin’ love these books!’
Posted on 2011/11/09 in General, tagged as
Recent Introducing competition winner Elizabeth Drake has just posted this lovely video on the Introducing Facebook page expressing her joy in receiving a big box of Introducing books from us…
‘Did you know that the Vatican has the highest crime rate per capita of any country on earth?’
Posted on 2011/11/09 in General, tagged as
The Etymologicon author Mark Forsyth includes this priceless nugget of information in his blog today for The Book Depository. He also manages to mention that it’s Samoa we have to thanks for tattoo and taboo, the Madagascan creature the Indri and the original Devil’s Advocate… Read the whole piece for them here and order your copy from the Book Depository – with free shipping anywhere in the world – here.
Introducing Postmodernism – the App!
Posted on 2011/11/07 in General, tagged as
We’re extremely excited to announce the first-ever digital version of the most popular Introducing title ever – Postmodernism, by Richard Appignanesi and Chris Garratt with Ziauddin Sardar and Patrick Curry. When the book was first published in mid-nineties Postmodernism seemed to be at its height, lending a thrilling – if regularly perplexing – new vantage point to not just philosophy and art but to fin-de-siecle phenomena such as world music, ‘… Read more »
‘When you are sarcastic to someone, you are metaphorically and etymologically, ripping the flesh from their bodies. ‘
Posted on 2011/11/07 in General, tagged as
The Etymologicon author Mark Forsyth writes on the Foyles blog today about bibliophiles, bibliomania and bibliophagists … and what they all have to be with sarcasm. ‘A bibliophagist is a devourer of books,’ he writes. ‘It comes from Greek root phagein which meant eat.’ ‘If you put the Greek anthropos, or man, in front of phagous you get a man-eater. Othello wooed Desdemona by telling her all about: …of the Cannibals that each other eat, The A… Read more »
What’s the meaning of ‘kindle’?
Posted on 2011/11/04 in General, tagged as
Mark Forsyth writes today about the history behind the word ‘kindle’ for, where else, but Amazon’s Kindle blog. ‘Etymologically, ‘kindle’ is in one of my favourite groups of words: the forgotten frequentative’ he says. ‘It’s a subject that I wrote a whole chapter about in my book, The Etymologicon. It’s a group that contains bustle, waddle and that old favourite disgruntle. When you did something frequently in Old English the Old Englishmen would… Read more »
