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"In 1746, Samuel Johnson undertook the Herculean task of writing the first comprehensive English dictionary. Imagining he could complete the job in three years, Johnson in fact took more than eight, and the dictionary itself turned out to be as much a work of literature as it was an invaluable reference. In alphabetized chapters, from 'Adventurous' to 'Zootomy,' Henry Hitchings tells of Johnson's toil and triumph and offers a closer look at the definitions...
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Peter Martin recounts the patriotic fervor in the early American republic to produce a definitive national dictionary that would rival Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. But what began as a cultural war of independence from Britain devolved into a battle among lexicographers, authors, scholars, and publishers, all vying for dictionary supremacy and shattering forever the dream of a unified American language.
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"Over the past ten years or so, "Short-shorts" or "Flash Fiction" has emerged as an increasingly popular and visible genre within fiction. David Galef's Brevity offers a guide to the genre for creative writing students by combining discussions of the various approaches and methods within the genre, examples of the form, and prompts for students to develop their own writing. Galef includes examples of the short-short genre from such writers as Collette,...
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English
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Mountweazel n. the phenomenon of false entries within dictionaries and works of reference. Often used as a safeguard against copyright infringement. Peter Winceworth is a lexicographer in Victorian-era London, toiling away at the letter 'S' for a multi-volume Encyclopaedic Dictionary. Secretly, he begins to insert unauthorized fictitious entries into the dictionary in an attempt to assert some artistic freedom. In the present day, Mallory is a young...
13) Palmares
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English
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Black History Month 2023 (WPL-ADULT)
Black Voices
OBD 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winners and Finalists
OBD Black History Month - Adult
Black Voices
OBD 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winners and Finalists
OBD Black History Month - Adult
Description
"The epic rendering of a Black woman’s journey through slavery and liberation, set in 17th-century colonial Brazil; the return of a major voice in American literature. First discovered and edited by Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones has been described as one of the great literary writers of the 20th century. Now, for the first time in over 20 years, Jones is ready to publish again. Palmares is the first of five new works by Gayl Jones to be published in...
14) Hag's Nook
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English
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'The Starberths die of broken necks...' So goes the legend in the village of Chatterham. The family have been wardens of Chatterham Prison for many generations, and each male heir must spend the night of his twenty-fifth birthday there, alone. Marin Starbeth has just turned twenty-five and is going to go through with the ritual... Meanwhile, after a chance encounter on a railway platform, Marin's sister Dorothy has fallen in love with young American...
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"This addition to the Crime Classics series is an immersive musical mystery, featuring diagrams of the orchestra arrangement and four pages of musical notation with relevance to the plot. First published in 1941 but out-of-print since, this is by a lost writer of the genre, Sebastian Farr (a pseudonym for Eric Walter Blom), a prolific Swiss-born and British-naturalised music lexicographer, music critic and writer. The headline from The Maningpool...
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"A smart, lively history of the Internet free culture movement and its larger effects on society--and the life and shocking suicide of Aaron Swartz, a founding developer of Reddit and Creative Commons--from Slate correspondent Justin Peters. Aaron Swartz was a zealous young advocate for the free exchange of information and creative content online. He committed suicide in 2013 after being indicted by the government for illegally downloading millions...
17) Uncle Chatzkel
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English
Description
Uncle Chatzkel portrays the patient triumph of one man’s dignity and intellect over genocide, oppression and personal adversity. Chatzkel Lemchen has lived through the Russian revolution, two world wars, a communist regime and the transition of Lithuania from Soviet republic to an independent state. During the Holocaust his parents and children, along with many of their fellow Jewish citizens, were killed by the Nazis and their Lithuanian supporters....
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"Gretel, a lexicographer by trade, grew up on a houseboat with her mother, wandering the canals of Oxford and speaking a private language of their own invention. Her mother disappeared when Gretel was a teen, abandoning her to foster care, and Gretel has tried to move on, spending her days updating dictionary entries. When her mother phones, Gretel will have to recover buried memories of her final, fateful winter on the canals. A runaway boy had found...
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English
Description
"What is a bumbershoot? Or a moonbow? And what does it mean when someone absquatulates...? Find out all this and more....Test your knowledge with more than 400 words to amaze, confuse, and inspire budding wordsmiths (and adults). All of the words featured...are difficult to spell, hard to say, and their meanings are obscure to most children (and most adults)! Written with simple, easy-to-understand definitions...celebrates the beauty of the English...
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