Download or read book Biting the Wax Tadpole written by Elizabeth Little and published by Random House. This book was released on 2008-11-11 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Chinese shopkeepers tried to find a written equivalent of Coca-Cola, one set of characters they chose was pronounced “ke-kou ke-la.” It sounded right, but it literally translated as “bite the wax tadpole.” Language, like travel, is always stranger than we expect and often more beautiful than we imagine. In Biting the Wax Tadpole Elizabeth Little takes a decidedly unstuffy and accessible tour of grammar via the languages of the world—from Lithuanian noun declensions and imperfective Russian verbs to Ancient Greek and Navajo. And in one of the most courageous acts in the history of popular grammar books, she attempts to provide an explanation of verbal aspect that people might actually understand. Other difficult and pressing questions addressed in Biting the Wax Tadpole include: *Just what, exactly, the Swedish names of IKEA products mean *Why Icelandic speakers must decide if the numbers 1-4 are plural *How Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) was able to take an otherwise unexceptional pair of breakfast foods and turn them into literary fodder for generations *Why Joanie Loves Chachi was Korea’s highest rated television show ever *Why Basque grammar seems downright kooky to just about anyone who isn’t a native speaker
Download or read book Bite the Wax Tadpole Poetry Like Word Formations written by Geoff and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Biting the Wax Tadpole written by Elizabeth Little and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2008-06-05 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can Johnny Cash’s lyrics teach us about the little-known Tangut dialect? Is ‘tabernacle’ really a swear word in Quebecois? Which language has absolutely no verbs? What is Earth’s politest insult? And what is biting the wax tadpole actually a translation of?* Prepare for a hilarious rollercoaster ride through hundreds of well-known, obscure, difficult, dead and even made-up languages. Elizabeth Little has waded through innumerable verb tables in every available mood and tense, untangled up to eighteen cases of noun, and wrestled with all kinds of complicated adjective, participles and glottal stops to bring you the best and most bizarre quirks of the ways people communicate all around the globe. From the language that has no different word for ‘blue’ or ‘green’, to why Icelanders need official permission to name their children, from what makes a Korean TV hit to what people might think you’re saying if you order eggs in Spain, Biting the Wax Tadpole will ensure you’re never lost for words again. *Coca-Cola, would you believe it?
Download or read book For God Country and Coca Cola written by Mark Pendergrast and published by . This book was released on 2000-03-17 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated history of the Coca-Cola soft drink company.
Download or read book Pretty as a Picture written by Elizabeth Little and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Wall Street Journal, Seattle Times, and CrimeReads Best Mystery Book of 2020 "Funny, fast-paced, and a pleasure to read." --The Wall Street Journal An egomaniacal movie director, an isolated island, and a decades-old murder--the addictive new novel from the bestselling author of Dear Daughter Marissa Dahl, a shy but successful film editor, travels to a small island off the coast of Delaware to work with the legendary--and legendarily demanding--director Tony Rees on a feature film with a familiar logline. Some girl dies. It's not much to go on, but the specifics don't concern Marissa. Whatever the script is, her job is the same. She'll spend her days in the editing room, doing what she does best: turning pictures into stories. But she soon discovers that on this set, nothing is as it's supposed to be--or as it seems. There are rumors of accidents and indiscretions, of burgeoning scandals and perilous schemes. Half the crew has been fired. The other half wants to quit. Even the actors have figured out something is wrong. And no one seems to know what happened to the editor she was hired to replace. Then she meets the intrepid and incorrigible teenage girls who are determined to solve the real-life murder that is the movie's central subject, and before long, Marissa is drawn into the investigation herself. The only problem is, the killer may still be on the loose. And he might not be finished. A wickedly funny exploration of our cultural addiction to tales of murder and mayhem and a thrilling, behind-the-scenes whodunit, Pretty as a Picture is a captivating page-turner from one of the most distinctive voices in crime fiction.
Download or read book Trip of the Tongue written by Elizabeth Little and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-02-28 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documents the author's travels throughout the country, where she witnesses firsthand the nation's many cultures and languages and what they say about who we are individually, socially and politically.
Download or read book Design User Experience and Usability Theory Methods Tools and Practice written by Aaron Marcus and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 699 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The two-volume set LNCS 6769 + LNCS 6770 constitutes the proceedings of the First International Conference on Design, User Experience, and Usability, DUXU 2011, held in Orlando, FL, USA in July 2011 in the framework of the 14th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2011, incorporating 12 thematically similar conferences. A total of 4039 contributions was submitted to HCII 2011, of which 1318 papers were accepted for publication. The total of 154 contributions included in the DUXU proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on DUXU theory, methods and tools; DUXU guidelines and standards; novel DUXU: devices and their user interfaces; DUXU in industry; DUXU in the mobile and vehicle context; DXU in Web environment; DUXU and ubiquitous interaction/appearance; DUXU in the development and usage lifecycle; DUXU evaluation; and DUXU beyond usability: culture, branding, and emotions.
Download or read book Dear Daughter written by Elizabeth Little and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Pretty as a Picture, a sensational thriller featuring an unforgettable heroine who just might have murdered her mother • Winner of the Strand Critics Award for Best First Novel • Nominated for the Barry and Macavity Awards for Best First Novel • Longlisted for the CWA John Creasy (New Blood) Dagger Award “Quick-witted and fast-paced.” —People magazine “A really gutsy, clever, energetic read, often unexpected, always entertaining.” —Kate Atkinson "This is an all-nighter . . . The best debut mystery I've read in a long time."—Tana French Former “It Girl” Janie Jenkins is sly, stunning, and fresh out of prison. Ten years ago, at the height of her fame, she was incarcerated for the murder of her mother, a high-society beauty known for her good works and rich husbands. Now, released on a technicality, Janie makes herself over and goes undercover, determined to chase down the one lead she has on her mother’s killer. The only problem? Janie doesn’t know if she’s the killer she’s looking for. Janie makes her way to an isolated South Dakota town whose mysteries rival her own. Enlisting the help of some new friends (and the town’s wary police chief), Janie follows a series of clues—an old photograph, an abandoned house, a forgotten diary—and begins to piece together her mother’s seemingly improbable connection to the town. When new evidence from Janie’s own past surfaces, she’s forced to consider the possibility that she and her mother were more alike than either of them would ever have imagined. As she digs tantalizingly deeper, and as suspicious locals begin to see through her increasingly fragile facade, Janie discovers that even the sleepiest towns hide sinister secrets—and will stop at nothing to guard them. On the run from the press, the police, and maybe even a murderer, Janie must choose between the anonymity she craves and the truth she so desperately needs. A gripping, electrifying novel with an ingenious and like-it-or-not sexy protagonist, Dear Daughter follows every twist and turn as Janie unravels the mystery of what happened the night her mother died—whatever the cost.
Download or read book Pretty As a Picture written by Elizabeth Little and published by Viking. This book was released on 2020 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marissa Dahl, a shy but successful film editor, travels to a small island off the coast of Delaware to work with the legendary - and legendarily demanding - director Tony Rees on a feature film with a familiar logline. Some girl dies. It's not much to go on, but the specifics don't concern Marissa. Then she meets the intrepid and incorrigible teenage girls who are determined to solve the real-life murder that is the movie's central subject, and before long, Marissa is drawn into the investigation herself. The only problem is, the killer may still be on the loose. And he might not be finished.
Download or read book Life in Year One written by Scott Korb and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-03-18 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For anyone who's ever pondered what everyday life was like during the time of Jesus comes a lively and illuminating portrait of the nearly unknown world of daily life in first-century Palestine. What was it like to live during the time of Jesus? Where did people live? Who did they marry? And what was family life like? How did people survive? These are just some of the questions that Scott Korb answers in this engaging new book, which explores what everyday life entailed two thousand years ago in first-century Palestine, that tumultuous era when the Roman Empire was at its zenith and a new religion-Christianity-was born. Culling information from primary sources, scholarly research, and his own travels and observations, Korb explores the nitty-gritty of real life back then-from how people fed, housed, and groomed themselves to how they kept themselves healthy. He guides the contemporary reader through the maze of customs and traditions that dictated life under the numerous groups, tribes, and peoples in the eastern Mediterranean that Rome governed two thousand years ago, and he illuminates the intriguing details of marriage, family life, health, and a host of other aspects of first-century life. The result is a book for everyone, from the armchair traveler to the amateur historian. With surprising revelations about politics and medicine, crime and personal hygiene, this book is smart and accessible popular history at its very best.
Download or read book It Was the Best of Sentences It Was the Worst of Sentences written by June Casagrande and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2010-07-27 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wickedly humorous manual, language columnist June Casagrande uses grammar and syntax to show exactly what makes some sentences great—and other sentences suck. Great writing isn’t born, it’s built—sentence by sentence. But too many writers—and writing guides—overlook this most important unit. The result? Manuscripts that will never be published and writing careers that will never begin. With chapters on “Conjunctions That Kill” and “Words Gone Wild,” this lighthearted guide is perfect for anyone who’s dead serious about writing, from aspiring novelists to nonfiction writers, conscientious students to cheeky literati. So roll up your sleeves and prepare to craft one bold, effective sentence after another. Your readers will thank you.
Download or read book The Well of Loneliness written by Radclyffe Hall and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2015-04-24 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This early work by Radclyffe Hall was originally published in 1928 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Well of Loneliness' is a novel that follows an upper-class Englishwoman who falls in love with another woman while serving as an ambulance driver in World War I. Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was born on 12th August 1880, in Bournemouth, England. Hall's first novel The Unlit Lamp (1924) was a lengthy and grim tale that proved hard to sell. It was only published following the success of the much lighter social comedy The Forge (1924), which made the best-seller list of John O'London's Weekly. Hall is a key figure in lesbian literature for her novel The Well of Loneliness (1928). This is her only work with overt lesbian themes and tells the story of the life of a masculine lesbian named Stephen Gordon.
Download or read book The Republic of Imagination written by Azar Nafisi and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-10-21 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller The author of the beloved #1 New York Times bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran returns with the next chapter of her life in books—a passionate and deeply moving hymn to America Ten years ago, Azar Nafisi electrified readers with her multimillion-copy bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran, which told the story of how, against the backdrop of morality squads and executions, she taught The Great Gatsby and other classics of English and American literature to her eager students in Iran. In this electrifying follow-up, she argues that fiction is just as threatened—and just as invaluable—in America today. Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite novels, she describes the unexpected journey that led her to become an American citizen after first dreaming of America as a young girl in Tehran and coming to know the country through its fiction. She urges us to rediscover the America of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and challenges us to be truer to the words and spirit of the Founding Fathers, who understood that their democratic experiment would never thrive or survive unless they could foster a democratic imagination. Nafisi invites committed readers everywhere to join her as citizens of what she calls the Republic of Imagination, a country with no borders and few restrictions, where the only passport to entry is a free mind and a willingness to dream.
Download or read book Several Short Sentences About Writing written by Verlyn Klinkenborg and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An indispensable and distinctive book that will help anyone who wants to write, write better, or have a clearer understanding of what it means for them to be writing, from widely admired writer and teacher Verlyn Klinkenborg. Klinkenborg believes that most of our received wisdom about how writing works is not only wrong but an obstacle to our ability to write. In Several Short Sentences About Writing, he sets out to help us unlearn that “wisdom”—about genius, about creativity, about writer’s block, topic sentences, and outline—and understand that writing is just as much about thinking, noticing, and learning what it means to be involved in the act of writing. There is no gospel, no orthodoxy, no dogma in this book. Instead it is a gathering of starting points in a journey toward lively, lucid, satisfying self-expression.
Download or read book Yaqui Myths and Legends written by and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 1959 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sixty-one tales narrated by Yaquis reflect this people's sense of the sacred and material value of their territory.
Download or read book Microbe Hunters written by Paul De Kruif and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1927.
Download or read book The British National Bibliography written by Arthur James Wells and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 1922 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
