Recently I posted elsewhere a list of 5 blogs that currently had my attention. I’ve just now realised, somewhat belatedly, that one, language hat, also attracts interesting threads in the comments. Getting hat as a feed, meant that I was missing these exchanges, for which there is not a feed I can detect. It reflects somewhat on the disadvantage of reading feeds rather than blogs in that you miss some of the extra blog content, not present in the feed. Some blogs provide an additional feed for comments but this not yet commonplace; given my own lack of comments altogether on the previous incarnation of this blog, I feel I have jumped a generation or two in changing from handcode direct to the latest wordpress.

From such comments I arrived at another blog, The Lexicographer’s Rules, which has nice commentary on dictionary related matters, though I’ve but dipped my toe. The blogger recommends a few dictionaries but rests upon a preference for the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary if money was not an issue.

For some reason, my move to wordpress coupled with a renewed enthusiasm for blogging, has seen a focus on text and words and books. I don’t why that is, or whether it’s delving into suppressed regions of my brain. I have, afterall, been a bookworm all my life and am sounded by about 3,000 books, inherited from my father, not to mention that my mother has a similar number. I should  rephrase that “jointly inherited” as they’re for my sister and I, though I have the responsibility of disposing of dad’s books (mum’s still alive so we’re not touching her’s). I’m tempted to retain them all if I can, alas I have a couple of thousand of my own, and unsurprisingly a chronic lack of space. My dad’s books are on the shelves (of the house he and I bought) and mine are mostly in boxes. So books are ever present and I have been rediscovering forgotten pleasures in the reading and collection thereof, and of course pleasure in the language contained within.