books

Apparently there is more and more attention for local variations of language: dialect or slang. Quite some time ago I wrote a little article about the subject and in this book reviews section I reviewed a few ‘books‘ about the subject. Last weekend we were in the Noord-Brabants Museum in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and in the little shop my eye fell on a few titles about the dialect from (Eastern) Brabant, the province that I live in. I bought two of them and both proved to be by Cor Swanenburg of whom I also have another title. The first is just a collection of sayings and anecdotes (very amusing), but the other is quite a ‘scholarly’ booklet about the history of slang and the Dutch language, pronounciation and writing guides and comparisons of different variants, because in an area as large as Eastern Brabant, the dialects differ quite a bit. Again there is too much focus on the more North-Eastern part of the district and the dialect differs quite a bit were I am from, but there is also information about my own region and constant references to a writer (Ad the Bont) from a village only a few kilometers from where I was born, who also wrote a book on the local dialect, so I ordered that one too. I will review them when I have finished reading them.

As you might have noticed, I have moved the “quotes” and the “publications” from the news section to the more logical section: this one. Also I have added a “blog” to every section, where I can put some chitchat that are not reviews. I consider removing the “now reading” information from the “sidebar” to this “blog” as well, but I haven’t decided yet.

As it comes to “chitchat”, yesterday I finally finished reading part 1 of Archaic Roman Religion of Dumézil and also A Hero With Thousands Faces of Campbell. I hope to review the latter later today.
Last week I bought the four-parts Egyptian Arch-Gnosis of Jan van Rijckenborgh. This founder of the Rosicrucian Rosicrucianum has filled four books with his own translations of Hermetic texts including a few that I didn’t have in another translation. I wasn’t really planning on buying the ‘all fours’, but I ran into them second hand and this might bring me back a little to my old interest of Hermetism. Also I bought two old books in reprint, one about Masonic symbolism and one about Christian symbolism. I might let you know if they are worth the money when I read them.

A minor thing about these ‘hidden categories’ is that I have my excerpt plugin set to only the last post in full and the rest excerpted, but a new but hidden post is also a post… I might have to look into that some time.