Reading links

Jo Walton at Tor.com started with a post on Is There a Right Age to Read a Book? In a follow up, What's Reading For?, she noted that in the comments

…people started talking about prescribing childhood reading and talking about books as if they were vitamins that you should take because they’re good for you. There were comments about the immorality of re-reading because it causes you to miss new books, and comments about learning morality from reading. It all became surprisingly Victorian.

Leaving the good folk south of the Murray River aside for a minute, she followed with What's Reading For Part 2 : Books Do Furnish a Mind which also discusses re-reading.

Meanwhile Joe Queenan at the Wall Street Journal discusses My 6,128 Favorite Books – that's his, not mine.

Reigniting the momentum in my collection of mixed metaphors

In 1923 A. E. Housman published a review of F. A. Simpson's Louis Napoleon and the Recovery of France 1848-1856. In the course of the review (be it noted – of a book written by one of his colleagues at Trinity College, Cambridge) he criticises "the slang with which Mr Simpson now and then defiles his pen". Housman might regard the following as (to defile my keyboard with slang) shooting fish in a barrel.

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A self-depreciating smile

Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son (1846-1848), chapter xxxvii 'More warnings than one' (first published in number xii of the serial, September 1847), page 554 in the Oxford World's Classics edition.
Edith suffered him to proceed. She looked at him now. As he bent forward, to be nearer, with the utmost show of delicacy and respect, and with his teeth persuasively arrayed, in a self-depreciating smile, she felt as if she could have struck him dead. 

I was listening to this passage on an audiobook and I assumed David Timson must have simply mispronounced the word "-pree-shee-ayte" instead of "-prek-ayte". However, there it is in the text: self-depreciating where one would expect self-deprecating. Of course I expected self-deprecating: depreciation is only what happens to assets for tax purposes.

The OED has the following. First the relevant extracts from the entry for self- :
self-, prefix…1. Compounds in which self- is in the objective relation to the second element: a. With nouns of action. …
self-deprecation n.
1924 W. HOLTBY Crowded Street xxxv. 260 Don't you think that this self-deprecation of yours was a little like cowardice? 1977 A. GIDDENS Stud. in Social & Polit. Theory ix. 307 Suicide represents an extreme on a range of possible forms of self-aggression, which extends from relatively minor forms such as verbal self- deprecation to actual self-destruction.
self-depreciation n.
1827 J. C. HARE & A. W. HARE Guesses at Truth (1873) 2nd Ser. 503 Self-depreciation is not humility.
Now the entry for the verb Dickens uses, with the quotations removed except one from Our Mutual Friend :
depreciate, v. Pronunciation: /dɪˈpriːʃɪeɪt/
Forms: Also depretiate.
Etymology: < Latin dēpretiāt- (-ciāt- ), participial stem of dēpretiāre (in medieval Latin commonly spelt dēpreciāre ), < DE- prefix 1a + pretium price. Compare modern French déprécier ( Dict. Acad. 1762).
1.
a. trans. To lower in value, lessen the value of.
b. spec. To lower the price or market value of; to reduce the purchasing power of (money).
2. To lower in estimation; to represent as of less value; to underrate, undervalue, belittle.
1865 DICKENS Our Mutual Friend II. III. ix. 78, I don't like to hear you depreciate yourself.
3. intr. To fall in value, to become of less worth.
In chapter 37 of Dombey and Son, Dickens is using meaning 2.

Finally the entry for the verb we would expect him to use. Note in particular the quotations offered for the "draft additions 1993". I have taken all the entires from the online version of the OED. I assume the additions are not in the print version. Presumably entries 1-5 would have been the "a." since the draft additions are said to be "b. More generally…" I have removed the quotations from the main entry but left those in the appendixes.
deprecate, v.
Pronunciation: /ˈdɛprɪkeɪt/
Etymology: < Latin dēprecāt-, participial stem of dēprecārī to pray (a thing) away, to ward off by praying, pray against, < DE- prefix 1b + precārī to pray.
1. trans. To pray against (evil); to pray for deliverance from; to seek to avert by prayer. arch.
†2. intr. To pray (against). Obs. rare.
3. trans. To plead earnestly against; to express an earnest wish against (a proceeding); to express earnest disapproval of (a course, plan, purpose, etc.).
†4.Etymology: < Latin dēprecāt-, participial stem of dēprecārī to pray (a thing) away, to ward off by praying, pray against, < DE- prefix 1b + precārī to pray.1. trans. To pray against (evil); to pray for deliverance from; to seek to avert by prayer. arch.
†2. intr. To pray (against). Obs. rare.
3. trans. To plead earnestly against; to express an earnest wish against (a proceeding); to express earnest disapproval of (a course, plan, purpose, etc.). †4.a. To make prayer or supplication to, to beseech (a person). Obs.b. absol. To make supplication. Obs.
†5. To call down by prayer, invoke (evil). Obs.
DERIVATIVES
deprecated adj. 1768 C. SHAW Monody vii. 61 Why..strike this deprecated blow? 1839 Times 11 July in Spirit Metrop. Conservative Press (1840) I. 158 To persist in such a deprecated and odious innovation.deprecating n.
DRAFT ADDITIONS 1993
b. More generally, to express disapproval of (a person, quality, etc.); to disparage or belittle. (Sometimes confused with depreciate.) Cf. self- deprecation n. at SELF- prefix 1a. Widely regarded as incorrect, though found in the work of established writers. 1897 Daily News 8 Jan. 6/3 It looks rather an attempt to deprecate distinguished commanders of the Commonwealth to please Restoration Royalists. 1927 V. WOOLF To Lighthouse I. viii. 70 He was disposed to slur that comfort over, to deprecate it. 1960 C. S. LEWIS Stud. in Words i. 18 We tell our pupils that deprecate does not mean depreciate or that immorality does not mean simply lechery because these words are beginning to mean just those things. 1965 M. FRAYN Tin Men xv. 80 Trying to shrink into himself, as if to deprecate..his authority and to become as other men.
 So self-deprecation is "widely regarded as incorrect". It is not surprising that the earliest quotation for self-deprecation is almost a century later than the earliest for self-depreciation. Nowadays self-deprecating (or acting in a self deprecating way) is almost a synonym of modest. In fact it means self-cursing. On the other hand to depreciate means to lower the value of. It is one of the perversities caused by income tax that depreciation of assets is something to be sought.

I haven't read Our Mutual Friend so I do not know the context of the quotation. But James Carker who gives Edith the self-depreciating smile in Dombey and Son is far from being a modest man. He puts on a modest front but is always described by the narrator – who recurs again and again to Carker's teeth – as a shark.

It might be that before it was supplanted by self-deprecation, self-depreciation had more of a sense of hypocrisy. Certainly James Carker is a flatterer and a hypocrite.

Note the quotation from the Hare brothers' Guesses at Truth (ser. stands for series not, as I thought, sermon – both brothers were Anglican clergymen). This is a miscellany of "detacht thoughts", consisting of a series of longer and shorter "Maxims, Aphorisms, Essays, Resolves, Hints, Meditations, Aids to Reflexion, Guesses". Those are both quotations from the opening (not strictly a preface, the work proper begins in a following paragraph), which explicitly connects their work with (inter alia) that of Solomon. It is meant to be like the wisdom literature in the Bible. Its nearest modern analogue might be The Little Book of Calm (et hoc genus omne) which used to occupy the space around cash registers in bookshops, which is now held by great works of literature rewritten as tweets. Anyway the full maxim, printed between two horizontal lines, after and before unrelated matter, reads as follows (on page 295 of the edition at Google books):
Self-depreciation is not humility, though often mistaken for it. Its source is oftener mortified pride.
The quotation from Giddens in the entry on self-deprecation is interesting (saying that there is a "range of possible forms of self-aggression, which extends from … verbal self- deprecation to actual self-destruction"). It represents the philosopher's urge to put everything on a continuum. It is not as though someone modest about his achievements has simply got off the train earlier (so to speak) than the suicide. If I am right about self-depreciation having a sense of hypocrisy (which is certainly not the case with self-deprecation) then perhaps Giddens is accidentally reimporting that sense into the replacement word.

At some point depreciation became a technical term used by accountants and therefore self-depreciation became a nonsense. It might even be an effect of the easier spelling of self-deprecation.

But what would I know? I never took a course on lexicography or linguistic theory.

"In the dusty, damp or dismal purlieus of second-hand bookshops"

Theodore Dalrymple usually writes pessimistic pieces on the corruption of modern society. As a prison doctor he cornered the market in vignettes of the prison infirmary which expressed contemporary abdications of personal responsibility, laziness, fecklessness and cruelty.

He also likes second-hand bookshops.
How many hours, among the happiest of my life, have I spent in the dusty, damp or dismal purlieus of second-hand bookshops, where mummified silverfish, faded pressed flowers and very occasionally love letters are to be found in books long undisturbed on their shelves. With what delight do I find the word ''scarce" pencilled in on the flyleaf by the bookseller, though the fact that the book has remained unsold for years, possibly decades, suggests that purchasers are scarcer still. Alas, second-hand bookshops are closing daily, driven out of business by the combination of a general decline in reading, the internet and that most characteristic of all modern British institutions, the charity shop. Booksellers tell me that 90 per cent of their overheads arise from their shops, and 90 per cent of their sales from the internet.
The story in the last three paragraphs about the purchase of "a slim paperback entitled Making Sense of the NHS Complaints and Disciplinary Procedures" is hilarious.

One of the commenters gives additional pleasure – unintended by him – in his denunciation of Dalrymple's central thesis. With all due respect to citizens of the Great Republic (at least one of whom reads this blog), I fear this bloke might be ("book stores", "outlet stores", general love of order and efficiency) one of yours.

I like to pretend I avoid buying from charity shops because of the threat they pose to the trade. Actually it is because I hardly ever go in second-hand bookshops any more. However, I do dream about them.

Thank Meg and Mog for complete audiobooks

Once upon a time you could get readings of books on LPs. Each record would be no more than an hour long, which meant a single full length play by Shakespeare could span three or more discs. Once the audio cassette came in, you could carry the spoken word with you, always provided you remembered the Walkman personal stereo. Now of course you can carry hundreds of audiobooks on a device the size of a pack of cards. The space saving of an abridged version – a full length reading of A Christmas Carol (one of Dickens' shorter works) would straddle at least two cassettes – is now insignificant.

Apparently the growth of unabridged recordings was down to one person, Helen Nicholl, the writer of the Meg and Mog series.
When her mother became ill, she bought her an early Sony Walkman and an audio version of Jane Eyre. Appalled to discover it had been radically abridged, her mother refused to listen to it. So in 1983, with £15,000 of Meg and Mog royalties, Helen founded Cover to Cover, determined to produce unabridged classics. It became a ground-breaking audiobook company. She invited the actress Patricia Routledge to stay and they recorded the whole of Wuthering Heights in 10 days. With her insight into what pleased the young she concentrated on the A-level curriculum: "Teenagers don’t want the bother of reading Mansfield Park," she noted, "they would rather lie in bed and have it read to them."
She also coaxed Stephen Fry into reading the then unknown Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Rest in peace.

What? Another One?

When I was at school, my English teacher once referred to Christopher Tolkien as publishing manuscripts from "out of a trunk in the attic". I thought this was an excessively cynical way of looking at The History of Middle Earth, and still do.

What would she make of the reconstruction of an incomplete long version of The Children of Húrin, a previously unheard of translation cum adaptation of the Völsunga saga in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún (always reaching for the accents, that Tolkien chap) and now another another work which nobody has ever heard of before, The Fall of Arthur? Next it will be Robin Hood, then the Táin, the Mabinogion and so on. Pretty soon he should have the entire Cambridge ASNAC syllabus covered.

UPDATE: What do you mean? Of course I'll be getting it!

UPDATE 2: And the deluxe version.

"He used an adjective"

A profanity in Dickens.

Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (1841), chapter 31. Joe Willetts has run away to join the army. As luck would have it he meets a recruiting serjeant at an inn.
"You're a gentleman, by G—!" was his first remark, as he slapped him on the back. "You're a gentleman in disguise. So am I. Let's swear a friendship."
Joe didn't exactly do that, but he shook hands with him, and thanked him for his good opinion.
"You want to serve," said his new friend. "You shall. You were made for it. You're one of us by nature. What'll you take to drink?"
"Nothing just now," replied Joe, smiling faintly. "I haven't quite made up my mind."
"A mettlesome fellow like you, and not made up his mind!" cried the serjeant. "Here—let me give the bell a pull, and you'll make up your mind in half a minute, I know."
"You're right so far"—answered Joe, "for if you pull the bell here, where I'm known, there'll be an end of my soldiering inclinations in no time. Look in my face. You see me, do you?"
"I do," replied the serjeant with an oath, "and a finer young fellow or one better qualified to serve his king and country, I never set my—" he used an adjective in this place—"eyes on."
"Thank you," said Joe, "I didn't ask you for want of a compliment, but thank you all the same. Do I look like a sneaking fellow or a liar?"
The serjeant rejoined with many choice asseverations that he didn't; and that if his (the serjeant's) own father were to say he did, he would run the old gentleman through the body cheerfully, and consider it a meritorious action.