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Here is one of Joyce Stirling’s columns in its entirety, from The Best of Joyce Stirling, published 1963, to give a better idea of her writing style… Some Advice to those “Getting On” in Life. A man aged 189 has been discovered living in a remote village in Persia. It is reported that Sayed Ali […]
Joyce Stirling’s column continued: Some Advice to those “Getting On” in Life. If you are ‘getting on’ and people mention Lord Kitchener or the Battle of the Somme, it is well to remember to look vague. This commits you to nothing. It might even be mistaken for your normal expression. Be careful, too, of song […]
READERSVOICE.com aims to give a few samples from interesting secondhand books. A lot of these books are out of print and hard to find. Opshops might not even have a lot of these older books, but these charity stores are good for finding cheap, interesting reads. And often the quality is better than more recent […]
Ford helps a stranded driver, contd… “Will you come and help me?” the stranger asked pleadingly. “With pleasure,” Mr Ford replied. Mr Ford started his own car, and he and the man in distress drove back to the stalled vehicle. In a few minutes Mr Ford had the man’s car purring, and both of them […]
Samuel Pepys’ Penny Merriments, selected and edited by Roger Thompson, published 1977, features highlights from Pepys’s collection of 115 tiny chapbooks. These were cheap pamphlets sold on the streets of London, obtained by Samuel Pepys (1633-1703). Pepys was known for his diaries which give a clear insight into life in London in the 1600s. Here […]
Folk Legends of Japan by Richard M. Dorson features some humorous tales… Kitchomu fools his neighbor Kitchomu was short of money and went to his neighbor to borrow some. The greedy neighbor said: “I have some money to save, but I have no money to lend.”…Eager to find out where his neighbor kept his money, […]
READERSVOICE.COM aims to give a few samples from secondhand books. The best place to find books like these is at charity bookstores and op shops. These places are a gold mine for book lovers, because of the random aspect of the books available. The books are sometimes very good, very rare and very cheap. […]
Some traditional Japanese proverbs… Here are some Japanese proverbs and expressions sampled from a 543-page book called Proverbs, published by Asahi Daily News, 1982… You can rely on a crane, but not on others: Heaven helps those who help themselves. A salt-seller fell down in snow and (instinctively) tasted the snow mistaking it for (his […]
The importance of emotion to the novel… Murasaki Shikibu lived from c. 973–c.1014. In her novel The Tale of Genji, Hikaru Genji might have expressed Lady Murasaki’s own views on the role of emotion in writing. The novel includes the following passage: He smiled and went on: “But I have a theory of my own […]
The importance of emotion to poetry… Motoori Norinaga was a Japanese scholar and philosopher (1730–1801). He said that there were so many love poems in the world because love, more than any other emotion, stirred the heart deeply and demanded an outlet in poetry. So it was to love poems that we must look for […]