39: Ik sprak met viervoeters, vogels en vissen, Konrad Lorenz

I read this in English (King Solomon's Ring) a while ago. It's still delightful.

38: Words in Your Ear, Tom Burton

Amusing blurbs on language, mostly etymology and the changing meaning of words.


Two amusing bits from the requisite prepositions-at-the-end-of-a-sentence chapter:

A child asked the babysitter to bring a book from downstairs and read her a bedtime story. When the babysitter returned with the wrong book, the child demanded furiously, "What did you bring that book I don't want to be read to out of up for?"

The sex-starved daughter of a prison governor offered a male prisoner whom she fancied the chance to escape from jail if he would sleep with her. He replied, "It's a tempting offer; but I'm afraid it's against my principles to end a sentence with a proposition."

Words, Words, Words, Burton's earlier book is hard to find outside Australia, but I'll keep an eye out.

37: De Dagboeken van Anne Frank: een eerbetoon aan Anne Frank, Anne Frank

My parents brought me the 2001 edition of the Anne Frank diaries prepared by het Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie. This is the version to read, with Anne's original texts and the originally published text on the same page.

She was a surprisingly good writer. What a loss.

34, 35, 36: More Robert van Gulik

Found another three Judge Dee books at Feldman's Books in Menlo Park and read them in short order: The Emperor's Pearl, The Lacquer Screen, and Necklace and Calabash.

33: The Given Day, Robert van Gulik

The only non-Dee novel van Gulik wrote.

It's O.K., but I much prefer the Dee novels.

32: Smith of Wootton Major & Farmer Giles of Ham, J.R.R. Tolkien

Two fairy tales by Tolkien.