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devoured a good book lately?

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This long-lost treasure is beginning to be rediscovered, mostly due to its appearance in Paul Collins' Sixpence House and its subsequent reissuing under Collins' "Collins' Library" imprint. In a nutshell it is an English phrase book for Portuguese speakers; the author, however, didn't speak a smack of English. He did, though, have a Portuguese to French dictionary, and a French to English dictionary. One can imagine the results. It includes such gems as:

Zombo deles; o meu navio e armado em guerra, tenho equipagem vigilante e animosa; e as municoes nao me faltam.

I jest of them; my vessel is armed in man of war, I have a vigilant and courageous equipage, and the ammunitions don't want me its.

Makes for great reading. Also for those who can't get enough, check out here where someone took the As She Is Spoke translation and compared it with the translation AltaVistata's Babelfish translator offers.

Revisited an old favorite yet again. I've read this book countless times, and also have it on tape courtesy of a friend. I still find it entertaining and enlightening. Not to say that I agree with everything that's in it, but you don't have to do so to appreciate the book.

ironically, although this book was a commercial and popular success from the start, it was very coolly received by Lewis' colleagues at Oxford, who felt it went against that professional detachment which professors were supposed to have towards, well, everything (see Humphrey Carpenter's The Inklings for a thorough discussion of this).

Still, one of my favorite books by CS Lewis.

I seem to have entered into this phase of reading books about books. Bizarre Books is just that, a list, sometimes with commentary, about strange books the authors have come across during their careers as writers and booksellers. Although they, perhaps, have too much of a penchant for bathroom humor and puns, some of these titles are absolute gems. So if you ever come across The Supernatural History of Worms buy it for me, I will pay any price...