Say you are tired...

'In the way' or 'on the way?

When you’re going somewhere, you’re ‘on the way’.
I’m on my way to the beach.

Something that is ‘in the way’ impedes your progress…
Don’t leave things in the passage where they’re in the way.

…or obscures your view.
I can’t see the stage because his hat is in the way.

14 Important Proverbs

1. A bad excuse is better than none:
Always give an excuse, even if it's a poor one.

2. A bad penny always turns up:
An unwanted or disreputable person constantly comes back.
3. A bad tree does not yield good apples:
A bad parent does not raise good children.
4. A bad workman blames his tools:
Blaming the tools for bad workmanship is an excuse for lack of
skill.
5. A barking dog seldom bites:
Someone who constantly makes threats rarely carries them out.
6. A bird in hand is worth two in a bush:
It is better to keep what you have rather than to risk losing it by searching for something better.
7. A black plum is as sweet as a white:
People should not be judged by their appearance.
8. A book holds a house of gold:
There is a wealth of knowledge in books.
9. A broken friendship may be soldered but will never be sound:
Friendships can be rebuilt after a dispute but will never be as strong as before.
10. A burden of one's own choice is not felt:
Something difficult seems easier when it is done voluntarily.
11. A burnt child dreads the fire:
A bad experience will make people stay away from certain things.
12. A calm sea does not make a skilled sailor.
A person shows their competence or ability when difficulties arise.
13. A cat has nine lives:
1) Cats can survive many accidents because they land on their feet without injury.
2) Nine lives = 3 years to play, 3 years to stray, 3 years to stay.
14. A chain is no stronger than its weakest link:
The strength of a group depends on each individual member.

[Courtesy: General English]

Phrasal Verb: 'come across' - its uses

If you ‘come across’ something, you find it by chance.
You can come across some good buys in junk shops.

It can mean that it gives the impression.
She comes across as a kind person.
And it also means clearly communicated.
The anti-war message of the film comes across strongly.
[Courtesy: Learn English]

Cool collocations

Mary Shelley’s handwritten poem 'Absence', on the death of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Man Booker prize: Howard Jacobson, David Mitchell and Ali Smith among 13 names on longlist

Howard Jacobson, David Mitchell and Ali Smith are among the British heavyweight writers who will compete for the Man Booker prize in its first incarnation as a global literary award, it was announced on Wednesday, along with David Nicholls, writer of the bestsellers Starter for Ten and One Day.
Thirteen novels were named on the longlist for the prize, which for more than 40 years has rewarded only Commonwealth and Irish writers. The rules changed last year, sparking fears that it would quickly be dominated by Americans.

In the event, judges chose four Americans: Joshua Ferris, Siri Hustvedt, Karen Joy Fowler and Richard Powers. An almost American, Joseph O'Neill, who is an Irish-born US resident, was also named one of what is known as the Man Booker "dozen".

This year's chair of judges, the philosopher AC Grayling, said it had been a vintage year.
"They are very ambitious books and some of them tackle big issues of the day," he said. "There's a lot of perceptiveness and wisdom in these books, some of them are quite moving and all of them are very difficult to put down once you get into them – a feature of just how richly textured they are and what great stories they tell." ......

They will now get the list down to six, announced in September, with the £50,000 winner named at a formal black-tie dinner.

The Booker longlist in full

Joshua Ferris (US) – To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
Richard Flanagan (Australia) – The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Karen Joy Fowler (US) – We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Siri Hustvedt (US) – The Blazing World
Howard Jacobson (Britain) – J
Paul Kingsnorth (Britain) – The Wake
David Mitchell (Britain) – The Bone Clocks
Neel Mukherjee (Britain) – The Lives of Others
David Nicholls (Britain) – Us
Joseph O'Neill (Ireland) – The Dog
Richard Powers (US) – Orfeo
Ali Smith (Britain) – How to Be Both
Niall Williams (Ireland) – History of the Rain
[Courtesy: www.theguardian.com / Story link: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/23/man-booker-prize-2014-longlist-revealed-us-writers]

Stephen King’s Reading List for Writers

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools)
to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King

In the afterword to his acclaimed guide On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King shares the following reading list of 96 books, covering a diverse range of fiction and non-fiction titles.
Accompanying the list is this explanation:

These are the best books I’ve read over the last three or four years, the period during which I wrote The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Hearts in Atlantis, On Writing, and the as-yet-unpublished From a Buick Eight. In some way or other, I suspect each book in the list had an influence on the books I wrote.

As you scan this list, please remember that I’m not Oprah and this isn’t my book club. These are the ones that worked for me, that’s all. But you could do worse, and a good many of these might show you some new ways of doing your work. Even if they don’t, they’re apt to entertain you. They certainly entertained me.

1. 
   Peter Abrahams, A Perfect Crime
2. Peter Abrahams, Lights Out
3. Peter Abrahams, Pressure Drop
4. Peter Abrahams,Revolution #9
5. James Agee, A Death in the Family
6. Kirsten Bakis, Lives of the Monster Dogs
7. Pat Barker, Regeneration
8. Pat Barker, The Eye in the Door
9. Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
10. Richard Bausch, In the Night Season
11. Peter Blauner, The Intruder
12. Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
13. T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Tortilla Curtain
14. Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods
15. Christopher Buckley, Thank You for Smoking
16. Raymond Carver, Where I’m Calling From
17. Michael Chabon, Werewolves in Their Youth
18. Windsor Chorlton, Latitude Zero
19. Michael Connelly, The Poet
20. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Free eBook – Gutenberg / Kindle)
21. K.C. Constantine, Family Values
22. Don DeLillo, Underworld
23. Nelson DeMille, Cathedral
24. Nelson DeMille, The Gold Coast
25. Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (Free eBook – Gutenberg / Kindle)
26. Stephen Dobyns, Common Carnage
27. Stephen Dobyns, The Church of Dead Girls
28. Roddy Doyle, The Woman Who Walked into Doors
29. Stanely Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show
30. William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
31. Alex Garland, The Beach
32. Elizabeth George, Deception on His Mind
33. Tess Gerritsen, Gravity
34. William Golding, Lord of the Flies
35. Muriel Gray, Furnace
36. Graham Greene, A Gun for Sale (aka This Gun for Hire)
37. Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana
38. David Halberstam, The Fifties
39. Pete Hamill, Why Sinatra Matters
40. Thomas Harris, Hannibal
41. Kent Haruf, Plainsong
42. Peter Hoeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow
43. Stephen Hunter, Dirty White Boys
44. David Ignatius, A Firing Offense
45. John Irving, A Widow for One Year
46. Graham Joyce, The Tooth Fairy
47. Alan Judd, The Devil’s Own Work
48. Roger Kahn, Good Enough to Dream
49. Mary Karr,  The Liars’ Club
50. Jack Ketchum, Right to Life
51. Tabitha King, Survivor
52. Tabitha King, The Sky in the Water
53. Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
54. Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air
55. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
56. Bernard Lefkowitz, Our Guys
57. Bentley Little,  The Ignored
58. Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
59. W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence (Free eBook – Gutenberg)
60. Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain
61. Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
62. Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes
63. Alice McDermott, Charming Billy
64. Jack McDevitt, Ancient Shores
65. Ian McEwan, Enduring Love
66. Ian McEwan, The Cement Garden
67. Larry McMurtry, Dead Man’s Walk
68. Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, Zeke and Ned
69. Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
70. Joyce Carol Oates, Zombie
71. Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods
72. Stewart O’Nan, The Speed Queen
73. Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
74. Richard North Patterson, No Safe Place
75. Richard Price, Freedomland
76. Annie Proulx, Close Range: Wyoming Stories
77. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
78. Anna Quindlen, One True Thing
79. Ruth Rendell, A Sight for Sore Eyes
80. Frank M. Robinson, Waiting
81. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
82. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban
83. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
84. Richard Russo, Mohawk
85. John Burnham Schwartz, Reservation Road
86. Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy
87. Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions
88. Richard Slotkin, The Crater
89. Dinitia Smith, The Illusionist
90. Scott Spencer, Men in Black
91. Wallace Stegner, Joe Hill
92. Donna Tartt, The Secret History
93. Anne Tyler, A Patchwork Planet
94. Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus
95. Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
96. Donald Westlake, The Ax

For more recommended books, see Stephen King’s Reading List Part II and Part III.
Fans of Stephen King should also check out this amazing graphic of the Stephen King Universe designed by Australian illustrator Gillian James, as well as this video in which King discusses the art of the short story.
[Courtesy/Source: http://www.aerogrammestudio.com/2014/03/04/stephen-kings-reading-list-for-writers/]

A 540-year-old book - the first to be printed in the English language - sells for over £1m in Sotheby's auction

A 540-year-old book, known as the first to be printed in the English language, has sold at auction for more than £1m.

The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye is a version of a French book written around 1463.
It was translated over a three-year period by William Caxton, who pioneered the printing press in England.
He published his version around 1474, at a time when when most books were printed in Latin, in either Ghent or Bruges, Belgium.
The story is an epic romance which portrays the heroes of Greek mythology as chivalric figures, according to Sotheby's, which auctioned it.
It was produced as a gift for the Duke of Burgundy's new wife Margaret - the sister of the English King, Edward IV.
The book was offered for auction by the Duke of Northumberland, who has been selling off dozens of family heirlooms after his estate was left with a massive bill for flood damage.
Last week, £32m of sculptures, ceramics, paintings and furniture were offloaded. A 1st Century Roman marble statue of Aphrodite - the Greek goddess of love - fetched £9.4m alone.
The sale was prompted by floods at Newburn, Newcastle, in 2012, during which a culvert collapsed and led to buildings being demolished.

Bidding war The guide price going into the auction was £600,000 for a volume that is one of only 18 surviving copies.
But a bidding war between three rivals pushed the auction up to a hammer price of £900,000, with the buyer paying £1,082,500 after the Sotheby's added its commission.
Sotheby's books specialist Gabriel Heaton said the work marked "a watershed moment in literary history when 'the father of English printing', William Caxton, embarked on the radical commercial decision to print the first book in English".
"Produced at a time when printing in the vernacular was still in its infancy, and when there was a relatively small domestic readership, this was a risky enterprise", he added.
The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye was the first book Caxton printed, and its production appeared to take its toll on a man who was a leading figure in the 15th Century English mercantile community.
In the book's epilogue, Caxton said "In the writing of the same my pen is worn, mine hand weary and not steadfast, mine eyes dimmed with overmuch looking on the white paper". [Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-28344300]

Happy birthday to Ernest Hemingway, who would have been 115!

Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Cicero (now Oak Park), Illinois, the second child of Grace, a fiercely ambitious and independent mother, and Clarence, a stern, deeply religious father. For reasons known only to her, Grace Hemingway decided to raise Ernest and his sister Marcelline, less than two years older, as twins. She dressed both children in frilly frocks and floppy little girl hats, or, on other occasions, dressed them both in boys’ overalls. She gave each of her “twins” dolls and china sets — and air rifles — to play with. She even held Marcelline back in school so she and Ernest could be in the same class together. It was a grand experiment in androgyny. Clarence wanted his son to become a doctor, but Hemingway refused to even entertain the thought of college. Instead, he became a reporter for the Kansas City Star, earning $15 a week. On his first day there, his editor gave him a style sheet that read: “Use short sentences. Use a short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.” Much later in his life, Hemingway referred to that brief list as “the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing. I’ve never forgotten them.” World War I called millions of men to enlist. In 1918, Hemingway was unable to pass the military physical because of poor eyesight, but that didn’t stop him from serving. He enlisted as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross. He was sent to Italy, just four miles from the Austrian front where he spent his days driving a boxy ambulance and nights drinking in a cafe. On July 8, he was caught in an assault and was hit by 28 pieces of shrapnel. He saw a blinding light and, as he later described it: “I died then… I felt my soul or something coming right out of my body, [the way] you’d pull a handkerchief out of the pocket by its corner.” When he was 21, Hemingway met and married (Elizabeth) Hadley Richardson, an adventurous woman with a sizable inheritance. (It was after the birth of their first child that Hemingway got his nickname "Papa.") The writer was well on his way to completing his first novel when disaster struck. In December 1922, he was sent to Lausanne, Switzerland to cover the peace conference. Hadley stayed behind in Paris preparing to join him later. She packed all his manuscripts (and carbon copies) and set off only to have the suitcase stolen at the train station. Hemingway comforted his wife over the loss, yet decades later he recalled the pain and utter heartbreak of losing his early writings. It was so severe, he said, that he had to “put it out of mind almost with surgery.” [Courtesy; www.biography.com]

Author Ernest Hemingway on an African adventure in September 1952. (Photo: Earl Theisen/Getty Images)

Ernest Hemingway during his convalescence at the American Red Cross Hospital in Milan in 1918 (Photo by Apic/Getty Images)