The 9 Most Amazing Bookstores in the World

Pardon the source, but this is a great set of pictures and short descriptions of some pretty amazing bookstores. I'd like to visit most of them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/26/9-of-the-most-amazing-boo_n_659870.html#s117832

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I wonder if e-books, growing as they are in popularity, will turn real books once again into a special item, expensive to produce, fine of quality, and more artisanal than mass-production oriented?

I wonder if the real books someone keeps in their house will be of special value to them or if they'll simply represent what they want others to think they read, while they actually read tawdry teen vampire suck-novels on their electronic tablet? 

I'd hate to see the tangible, physical book die out. There is a substance and a reality to them that are hard to valuate, but which I think have a meaning. I'm not such a fan of e-books, even though I own many PDFs which are exceptionally portable.

There's just something about wandering in a book store with a hot cider in the winter. Or perusing the latest offerings in my local mall bookseller at lunchtime. And bookstores with character are like public houses with character - you just can't help hoping they never die out or change into something lesser.

And if things go bad in the world, we'll still be able to read conventional books by sunlight. Hopefully we'll have saved some good ones.

The BBC: Destroyers of the English Language

Participatory
Normal: PAR-tih-sih-pah-toh-ree
BBC: par-tih-sih-PAY-toh-ree

Regulatory
Normal: REG-yoo-lah-toh-ree
BBC: reg-yoo-LAY-toh-ree
 
Syracuse
Normal: SEE-rah-cue-suh
BBC: SYE-rah-cue-seh

Osaka
Normal: OH-saw-kah
BBC: aw-SAY-kah

There was another one from tonight I can't remember.

And the uniformity of their crappy pronunciation shows an attention and focus upon getting it wrong consistently.

They are awful. They have posh sounding accents but sound remarkably backward when they can't correctly pronounce common english words. 

English is a wonderful language. Who is going to teach it to the English?

Word of the Day: Sybilline

http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2010/07/08.html

This word has a classical, although somewhat murky derivation. I like it because of that classical tie in and the fact one of its definition involves another word I quite enjoy - oracular.