Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
This day in 1882, the brilliant and talented Virginia Woolf was born, and to celebrate it, a few lucky tweeters will win a copy of one of her books. When you see,
“It’s Virginia Woolf’s birthday!”
just retweet it, along with the answer to this trivia question:
What was Virginia’s mother’s maiden name?
International readers, keep your eyes on @OWC_Oxford and RT before 3pm GMT! Live in the US? Follow @OUPblogUSA. You’ll have until 3pm ET.
“So, why did we launch the Trenta? We listened to you,” says Starbucks. Really?
Looking for more answers, I asked my friend Greg Dietrich for his thoughts on the matter. Greg works at Paragon Coffee Trading, which means he imports coffee and collaborates with members of the New York commodities coffee trade. Oh and he gets to roast beans and cup all day (see picture below on right). Below is a conversation (via Gmail’s instant messaging service) we had about the Bucks’ latest creation.
Amy Mandelker has taught at UCLA, University of Southern California, Columbia, Brown, and Princeton Universities. Her books include Framing ‘Anna Karenina’: Tolstoy, the Woman Question & the Victorian Novel and Approaches to World Literature: Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’. She has revised the acclaimed Maude translation of War and Peace and recently sat down with Podularity to talk about it. (Read the audio guide breakdown here, where you can also get excerpts from this podcast.) Once you’re done, we welcome you to look back at Amy Mandelker’s blog posts and discover why Nick thinks you should read Tolstoy.
By Nick Mafi, Publicity Assistant
To further praise Count Leo Tolstoy’s monumental novel War & Peace is about as necessary as adding another Duane Reade in Manhattan. But that’s still not going to stop me from telling you why you should must read my all-time favorite book this year.
By Robin S. Rosenberg
I recently saw a preview for the musical Spider-Man: Turn Out the Dark. It’s not really a musical; it’s a spectacle. It succeeds as a spectacle, fails as a musical, and hangs itself as a Spider-Man origin story. It’s easier to find good things to say about the spectacle aspect, so I’ll start by reviewing that aspect of the play.
Tariq Ramadan is Professor of Islamic Studies on the Faculty of Theology at Oxford University, Visiting Professor at Erasmus University (Netherlands), Senior Research Fellow at St Antony’s College (Oxford), Doshisha University (Kyoto, Japan), and the President of the European think tank European Muslim Network (EMN) in Brussels. He is the author of many books on Islam and the West, including Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, Radical Reform, and What I Believe.
By Gordon Thompson
Baby boomers have not only fundamentally shaped our modern world, but also how their children (and grandchildren) perceive that world. The generation that gyrated with hula hoops and rock ‘n’ roll also embraced British pop music (among other things) and have bequeathed this aesthetic to today’s college students. On campuses across North America, students amble to classes with “Beatles” patches on their book bags while their college radio programs often include music by the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Kinks. At Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York a few years ago, a Facebook survey identified the Beatles as the favorite campus musical artists, followed closely by Bob Dylan. Given the continuing importance of a band that dissolved in acrimony over forty years ago, a question arises: does this subject merit inclusion in the college curriculum? The answer is clearly, yes.
By Anatoly Liberman
Last week I mentioned the idiom to be (dead) nuts on ‘to be in love with’ and the verb spoon ‘to make love’ and promised to say something about both. After such a promise our readers must have spent the middle of January in awful suspense. So here goes. The semantic range of many slang words is often broad, but the multitude of senses attested for Engl. nut (see the OED) is amazing. I will reproduce some of them, both obsolete and current: “a source of pleasure or delight” (“To see me here would be simply nuts to her”), nuts in the phrases to be (dead) nuts on “to be in love of, fond of, or delighted with,”
By Dave Edmonds and Nigel Warburton
Doctors have long been able to heal the body: now scientists are developing radical ways of altering the mind. Governments must determine what practices to permit – and for this they need rational arguments to draw relevant distinctions. Time to call on the philosophers…?
By Jeanne Munn Bracken
Move over, Stephen King and Mary Higgins Clark. For the year 2010, the hottest buzz in popular literature was Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Released over the past couple of years, the three novels are available in a wide array of formats: hardcover and paperback books, e-books, audiobooks, and now in Swedish films with English subtitles. Millions of books in dozens of countries and languages have brought the late author immense fame and fortune, although he did not live to enjoy it.
Tweet I just wanted to extend a hello to our new readers, many of whom I had the pleasure of meeting at ALA in San Diego earlier this week. As always, if you have suggestions, questions, ideas about/for OUPblog, I more than welcome them. You can email me at blog[at]oup[dot]com. And now, I present the […]
By Kathryn Kalinak
The Oscar for Best Original Score has been in the news recently—and not in a good way. Three excellent film scores have been disqualified for Oscar nomination because in one way or another, all were deemed not “original” enough: Clint Mansell’s score for Black Swan (too much Tschaikovsky) and Carter Burwell’s scores for The Kids Are Alright (too many songs) and True Grit (too dependent on pre-existing music). As a great fan of the western and its film scores, I was truly disappointed by the True Grit disqualification. Burwell’s score is a gem, harking back to the classic western film scores of the studio era while simultaneously updating them.
What do scientists say about the “soul”? How does Richard Dawkins answer the question: “why are we here?”
Yes, today would be Jack London’s 135th birthday, and to celebrate it, we’ll be doing a giveaway to 6 lucky tweeters. International readers, keep your eyes on @OWC_Oxford and when you see,
“It’s Jack London’s 135th birthday!”
just retweet it before 3pm GMT! Live in the US? Follow @OUPblogUSA. You’ll have until 3pm ET. Winners will be announced on Thursday
We were all very sorry to hear that OUP author and former TLS editor John Gross has died at the age of 75. Judith Luna, Senior Editor, who worked with him for over 25 years on a range of titles, pays tribute to him in this post.
By Anatoly Liberman
Oscar Wilde is most often quoted for his infinite wit, and those who know him are mainly aware of his comedies. Some people are still charmed by his fairy tales (“The Happy Prince” and a few others; you should have seen how my undergraduate students – those poor products of popular culture – listen to this story!) and cannot shake off the attraction of The Picture of Dorian Gray. But usually he is mentioned, if at all, in the context of his innumerable mannerisms, the overblown cult of the beautiful, homosexuality, and tragic imprisonment. The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a famous title, but I wonder who reads the poem today. More than anything else, Wilde wanted to sound brilliant, which did not cost him the least effort, because he was brilliant. His paradoxes have become proverbial.