Two Links for Readers
Apr. 17th, 2007 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talkstowolvesWell, best start hiding your books. The Firemen are on their way:
Publisher makes lite work of the classics. For those of you who don't click on the link, allow me to say that this publisher got the brilliant idea to publish "Compact Editions" of class works such as Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, David Copperfield, etc. This means, essentially, that they're eliminating 40% of the books in order to make them more accessible.
Frankly, this is bullshit. As a writer, I am emphatically against other people deciding what does and does not belong in the final editions of my works. Note, however! I do recognize the value of editing, but not such mass butchery. If you don't want to read all of a book, skim. Don't permit someone to fix these books arbitrarily, cutting out entire subplots, chapters, etc., in the name of making something more "accessible." Some of the books on the publisher's list aren't even that complicated or inaccessible in the first place!
Argh. And no, I don't agree with abridged versions either.
Link found via this post on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pegkerr's livejournal.
* * *
My best friend (crowley) provided this humorous link:
How To Use Analogies and Metaphors In Your Essay and Get National Fame.
I can't even choose which one is my favorite: there are too many horrible and equally amusing ones! I would really appreciate the creativity spent in coming up with these if they were intentional. The thought that they're unintentional would almost be too much to bear if I hadn't spent the last 8 months teaching high school English.
Every year, English teachers from across the USA can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year’s winners.
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. Instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. Traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. At a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are meant to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
Publisher makes lite work of the classics. For those of you who don't click on the link, allow me to say that this publisher got the brilliant idea to publish "Compact Editions" of class works such as Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, David Copperfield, etc. This means, essentially, that they're eliminating 40% of the books in order to make them more accessible.
Frankly, this is bullshit. As a writer, I am emphatically against other people deciding what does and does not belong in the final editions of my works. Note, however! I do recognize the value of editing, but not such mass butchery. If you don't want to read all of a book, skim. Don't permit someone to fix these books arbitrarily, cutting out entire subplots, chapters, etc., in the name of making something more "accessible." Some of the books on the publisher's list aren't even that complicated or inaccessible in the first place!
Argh. And no, I don't agree with abridged versions either.
Link found via this post on
pegkerr's livejournal. My best friend (
crowley) provided this humorous link:How To Use Analogies and Metaphors In Your Essay and Get National Fame.
I can't even choose which one is my favorite: there are too many horrible and equally amusing ones! I would really appreciate the creativity spent in coming up with these if they were intentional. The thought that they're unintentional would almost be too much to bear if I hadn't spent the last 8 months teaching high school English.
Every year, English teachers from across the USA can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year’s winners.
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. Instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. Traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. At a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are meant to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.