Is it Friday yet ?
Apr. 1st, 2003 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaOh look, it's Elizabeth trying to sneak enormous philosophical issues into a scratty little cut...
I'm currently reading Antonia Fraser's biography of Mary, Queen of Scots. Which has so far been interesting, although it has consistently unsettled me with its strange word-order within sentences. Owing to my unsociable habit of reading while eating, it's also rather more splattered with miso soup than any book on Scottish history should rightfully be.
However, in talking about the behaviour of the Scottish nobility around the time Mary returned to Scotland, it says:
"there is a basic code of human decency, which should not be violated even in times of insecurity" (quote approximate, as I don't have the book with me).
Which struck me as rather a sweeping assumption to just drop into the middle of a pargraph. I'm not even sure I agree with it. I'm wondering if it's the hypothetical should of someone who knows it isn't them whose going to be suffering the insecurity...
Discuss :)
Today's slightly less in-depth question: why, when placing multi-volume books on shelves, do the volumes always seem to go right to left ? It seems an odd convention, in view of the left-to-right nature of our society. I'm hoping![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
addedentry might know the answer to this one.
I'm tired. My neck hurts.
On the plus side, a colleague brought me a CD this morning of what he describes as "home-brew chilled dance/ambient with celtic crossovery things going on" which he made, as is traditional, in his bedroom.
I'm quite liking it so far.
I'm currently reading Antonia Fraser's biography of Mary, Queen of Scots. Which has so far been interesting, although it has consistently unsettled me with its strange word-order within sentences. Owing to my unsociable habit of reading while eating, it's also rather more splattered with miso soup than any book on Scottish history should rightfully be.
However, in talking about the behaviour of the Scottish nobility around the time Mary returned to Scotland, it says:
"there is a basic code of human decency, which should not be violated even in times of insecurity" (quote approximate, as I don't have the book with me).
Which struck me as rather a sweeping assumption to just drop into the middle of a pargraph. I'm not even sure I agree with it. I'm wondering if it's the hypothetical should of someone who knows it isn't them whose going to be suffering the insecurity...
Discuss :)
Today's slightly less in-depth question: why, when placing multi-volume books on shelves, do the volumes always seem to go right to left ? It seems an odd convention, in view of the left-to-right nature of our society. I'm hoping
addedentry might know the answer to this one.I'm tired. My neck hurts.
On the plus side, a colleague brought me a CD this morning of what he describes as "home-brew chilled dance/ambient with celtic crossovery things going on" which he made, as is traditional, in his bedroom.
I'm quite liking it so far.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: Books going right to left
Date: 2003-04-01 02:08 am (UTC)So you've reduced the problem to a question already asked :)
Re: Books going right to left
Date: 2003-04-01 02:11 am (UTC)If asked to arrange books in a pile I'd put the first one on the top.
It may be that your book-pile-arranging is done with the underlying knowledge that turning them afterwards puts them in the 'wrong' order, while the rest of the world just follows the 'top-down' rule without having thought about what happens when they put them in the bookcase.
Re: Books going right to left
Date: 2003-04-01 02:23 am (UTC)What "top down" rule?
Re: Books going right to left
Date: 2003-04-01 02:39 am (UTC)Re: Books going right to left
Date: 2003-04-01 03:00 am (UTC)Oh, I see.
In that case, I'll point out that I very rarely sort books in a stack and then place the stack on the shelf - I find it easier to sort books on the shelf, and as such it makes sense to me to sort them "shelfwise" (i.e, left to right) rather than "stackwise" (i.e, top to bottom).
Re: Books going right to left
Date: 2003-04-01 02:23 am (UTC)But I'd put the first volume on the bottom
Me too. I treat multi-volume books in exactly the same way that I treat series of books - the first one goes on the left.
Is this not the case in real libraries? I certainly don't remember ever seeing an encyclopedia arranged
[Winter - ZZ Top] [Televison - Wimbledon] [Marmoset - Teleology] [Etruscan - Heron] [Aardwolf - Eschaton]
Re: Books going right to left
Date: 2003-04-01 02:30 am (UTC)What kicked me off with this today was the boxed set of Narnia books in the staffroom - The Last Battle is the leftmost book in the box, and The Magician's Nephew the rightmost. This seems to be quite common in boxed sets of series(es).
(In fact, everything from herring...)
Re: Books going right to left
Date: 2003-04-01 02:36 am (UTC)I did notice that... It was strongly tempting to put them 'the right way round'. It's the same sort of impulse as straightening hanging pictures, I think...
Re: Books going right to left
Date: 2003-04-01 02:55 am (UTC)(In fact, everything from herring...)
Point scored and duly noted.