An advocate for seredipity in reading

Nice little essay in The Guardian, March 5th, 2010, The Great Surprises of Lucky-Dip Reading by Daniel Tapper.

Building a Better Teacher

New York Times, March 2nd, 2010, Building a Better Teacher.

And he who lies late . . .

illustration by Blanche Fisher Wright

COCK-CROW
Mother Goose

Cocks crow in the morn
To tell us to rise,
And he who lies late
Will never be wise;
For early to bed
And early to rise,
Is the way to be healthy
And wealthy and wise.

High-Aptitude Minds

High-Aptitude Minds: The Neurological Roots of Genius by Christian Hoppe and Jelena Stojanovic in the September 4th, 2008 Scientific American magazine.

Several interesting findings.

"Studies show that practice and perseverance contribute more to accomplishment than being smart does."

"The researchers determined that scholarly success was more than twice as dependent on assessments of self-discipline as on IQ. What is more, they reported in 2005, students with more discipline - a willingness to sacrifice short-term pleasure for long-term gain - were more likely than those lacking the skill to improve their grades during the school year. A high IQ, on the other hand, did not predict a climb in grades."

The thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookish people

George Orwell the bookseller. Here is his 1936 essay, Bookshop Memories.

Many things remain the same, some seventy years later, though his prediction that "The combines can never squeeze the small independent bookseller out of existence as they have squeezed the grocer and the milkman" was sadly off the mark (though he was closer to the truth with regard to used bookshops).

Modern books for children are rather horrible things, especially when you see them in the mass. Personally I would sooner give a child a copy of Petrenius Arbiter than Peter Pan, but even Barrie seems manly and wholesome compared with some of his later imitators.

Then there is this.

It is therefore worth noting that of all the authors in our library the one who 'went out' the best was - Priestley? Hemingway? Walpole? Wodehouse? No, Ethel M. Dell, with Warwick Deeping a good second and Jeffrey Farnol, I should say, third. Dell's novels, of course, are read solely by women, but by women of all kinds and ages and not, as one might expect, merely by wistful spinsters and the fat wives of tobacconists. It is not true that men don't read novels, but it is true that there are whole branches of fiction that they avoid. Roughly speaking, what one might call the average novel - the ordinary, good-bad, Galsworthy-and-water stuff which is the norm of the English novel - seems to exist only for women. Men read either the novels it is possible to respect, or detective stories. But their consumption of detective stories is terrific.

Here is the background on these now forgotten best sellers via links to Wikipedia. Ethel M. Dell, Warwick Deeping, and Jeffrey Farnol. Romance writers all. The dynamics of who is remembered and who forgotten are fascinating.

Define: Odd's boddikins

Wodehouse is a great logo coach (word coach?). I never realized quite how much he probably contributed to the development of my youthful vocabulary until I recently reread Jeeves in the Morning and was struck by how many allusions he made to things that ought to be known but that I probably did not really know enough about or used words that I have always just interpreted from the context of his use.

"Odd's boddikins, Jeeves," I said, "I am in rare fettle this a.m. Talk about exulting in youth! I feel up and doing, with a heart for any fate, as Tennyson says."

"Longfellow, sir."

"Or, if you prefer it, Longfellow. I am in no mood to split hairs. . . ."

From dictionary.com

Odds bod i kins 
-interjection Archaic.
(a euphemistic form of God's body, used as a mild oath.)
Also, Oddsbodikins, Odsbodikins, Odsbodkins.

Origin:
1670 - 80; Gad + 's + bodikin (body + -kin) + -s

The poem to which Bertie Wooster is referring is Longfellow's A Psalm of Life. A poem chockablock full of great lines. "Footprints on the sands of time", "Be not like dumb, driven cattle!, Be a hero in the strife!", and "But to act, that each to-morrow, Find us further than to-day".

A Psalm of Life
by H.W. Longfellow

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest,"
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us further than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting;
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time; -

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

He brought the coffin home to substantiate this tale

From Priscilla Napier's A Late Beginner, available directly from Slightly Foxed. "Priscilla Napier grew up in Egypt during the last golden years of the Edwardian Age - a time when, for her parents' generation, it seemed the sun would never set upon 'the regimental band playing selections from HMS Pinafore under the banyan tree.'"

Her tale is full of marvellously improbable family stories that are distinctly a product of England and its empire.

Arthur, the next eldest, was grey-eyed and rather more dashing; a magnificently well-made man, with a long-jawed throwaway charm; though certainly brave he was not conspicuously affectionate and only intermittently mild. He had just come back with his regiment from the West Indies, where, beset by yellow fever, they had died in great numbers. He himself was so desperately ill that his companions, not knowing about the Slessor constitution, had made his coffin and engraved his name on it and marched some miles in the hot sun to dig his grave. He brought the coffin home to substantiate this tale, and because it is one of those few things that cannot fail to come in useful. In fact he had no need of it for another sixty years. It hung about in the stables, getting underfoot, until someone hit on the notion of making it into a toboggan.