The great lost apostrophe catastrophe…

Whats your view’s?



Greeting’s, Blog-followers’!







Now, keen eyed reader’s may have seen that the well known chain of bookshops’ WATERSTONE’S have decided that apostrophe’s don’t matter (insert gasp of astonishment HERE!) and wish to be known henceforth as, simply, WATERSTONES. (They claim that the apostrophe is redundant, apparently, and unhelpful in the new e-media age…(Goodnes's only knows what Eddie Royle might say!)






Well, its true…I confess…apostrophe’s arent really my thing either, and I often struggle with the little wriggler’s myself, as I cant always see the point of em, but even so I was a bit surprised about this new’s. (I know its driven some of my Research Team colleagues’ into paroxysm’s of rage).


As one of them wisely pointed out: imagine your local library service devising the slogan “LIBRARIES – We’re here to help” but omitting the little ‘ bit…then wed be in a right old can of worm’s, eh?






(Luckily, dear reader's, we do have lots of tip-top punctuation guides available, so thats a relief)


So: heres the question: apostrophe’s – doe’s it matter? Wed love to have your view’s.


Just use the comment’s box below.






TTF’N

“Psssssstt!!!! ...

Call the Midwife ...

this one’s going to be BIG”!

Pssssstt!!! – Pass it on:

What-ho, Blog-followers…
Some books get big by word of mouth, don’t you find? They don’t get much mention in the press when they’re first published, they don’t get picked up by Richard & Judy, and they don’t win prizes…

But what they do is get lodged in your mind…you can’t stop reading them…you can’t stop thinking about them…you just have to tell someone about them…
Personal recommendation and enthusiastic word of mouth reviews are what we’re about, and it’s wonderful when others enjoy ‘em too…The Dig, Alone in Berlin, Dark Matter and a Month in the Country are just a few of my own *`Psssstt – pass it on choices`, but the one that ‘s really done the rounds (pardon the pun) and made it big is Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth.
I was first told about this a few years ago at a very posh publishers' soiree (I must’ve been invited by mistake!) by a very grand lady, who looked not dissimilar to my untutored eye to Barbara Cartland: (I`m fairly certain now that it wasn’t her in fact, as this particular lady told me two of the coarsest jokes I`ve ever heard**).
Anyway, she huskily whispered to me: “Young Man!” (for I suspect her eyesight must have been not of the keenest variety) “If you only read one more book again in your life then you MUST read Call the Midwife. It’s stunning, stupendous and will be one of the biggest books of the decade”. And – by crikey – she was right! It is stunning.

It’s become a real word-of-mouth phenomenon, and everyone I`ve recommended it to thinks it’s stunning too. And now, blow me down, the dear old BBC have heard about it and are going to make it their big blockbuster drama event of the spring.

So...Psssstttt! Take it from me – this one’s going to be BIG!
Get in quick!
Read it NOW!

TTFN

 * But I’d like to hear about your own `Pssssttt! Pass it On’ choices., obviously…




** See the Blogbrarian in person for more details.

The Borrowers...

(Or: "There's something about Mary"...)

“Never a lender nor borrower be” goes the old saying, to paraphrase The Bard….but where would that leave the great British public library service, eh?...No, no dear readers – lending and borrowing, particularly during these straitened times, might very well become a more common currency…

I was pondering this whilst watching the excellent BBC production of The Borrowers this yuletide past (did anyone else see it?...what did you think?)
Wasn’t it splendid!






I seem to recall reading the book as a young blognipper, but – confess – I know little about its author, one Mary Norton (1903 – 1992)…


Hence, I have mobilised my research team to investigate, and here are their findings, condensed into an exquisitely compact and thimble-sized FIVE FACTS:


1) Mary Norton devised the idea of the tiny Borrowers, as she was immensely short-sighted a child: she remembered peering close up into grass, tree roots, beneath the furniture, cracks in the floorboards and such like…it made her wonder what life would be like for tiny little creatures, and how they’d cope with such obstacles in their way, and that’s how the idea began…


2) Mary seems to have been universally liked and admired: “She was as thin as a wasp, and very pale and quiet and gentle” wrote one contemporary, while her publisher said “there were few authors quite so charming and distinguished as Mary, so vital, and with such a marvellous sense of humour”.


3) During the war, Mary’s husband served in the Royal Navy, and the family were based in New York – it was here that she published her first children’s books `The Magic Bed-Knob` and then `Bonfires and Broomsticks` - back in England, her publishers (wisely) revised the titles into one volume: ‘Bedknobs and Broomsticks’!


4) Despite her wealth and social standing, Mary had an acute social conscience, a deep sympathy for the underdog, and a growing awareness of green issues – it’s been suggested that The Borrowers actually represented the real “little people” of post-war Britain suffering economic and social hardships, poverty, rationing, unemployment and hunger: Arrietty is the forerunner of many an anguished teenager, and the destruction of the Borrowers’ environment represents ecological and civic decline…All very modern!


5) Despite this, Mary Norton remained an optimistic and cheerful campaigner for children, and the value of reading, with a refreshingly anarchic tinge…"Children nowadays are encouraged to invent, but still in ways devised by adults: `Clear up that mess!’ has destroyed many a secret world…chaos and destruction worries grown-ups far more than it does children…if imagination and the raw materials are there to hand, they simply build again”.






Mary Norton – I like the cut of your jib, and I salute you!






Now, where was I? And where did I leave my thimble?...Ah, yes! – I remember…


"Borrowing” – sorry, Shakespeare old chap, but the idea of borrowing and lending has never been so important, in so many ways…WHOOPS!




And don’t forget, dear readers and borrowers; YOUR LIBRARY NEEDS YOU!


MAKE DO AND MEND!!


YOU’VE NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD!!!






TTFN