David Given Schwarm

The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester My rating: 4 of 5 stars Yet another look into the genius of the OED. Super recommended to word fans–the amount of playful word fun is amazing. There is also a lot of “behind-the-scenes” information in this volume–great stuff on Murphy,…

The Body Politics of Julia KristevaMaterial compulsion, spasm of a memory belonging to the species that either binds together or splits apart to perpetuate itself, series of markers with no other significance than the eternal return of the life-death biological cycle. How can we verbalize this prelinguistic, unrepresentable memory? Heraclitus’ flux, Epicurus’ atoms, the whirling…

May you be happy May you be honest May you be heard May you be healthy

Northern Spy by Flynn Berry My rating: 3 of 5 stars I read this with my SARGE Reading group–we have been on a bit of an Irish kick. It was fine–a commoner spy story, I guess. Lots of IRA history and background sprinkled in. Worth reading if that is your genre and you have real…

“I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious.”

No arguing This has been going absolutely horribly. I am not even sure I am trying–mostly getting mocked by friends for even trying. I did spend some time thinking about talking versus coaching. A lack of humility in how I describe things leads to most of the arguments I receive. Most of the arguments I…