Students who like to complain about the complexities of the English language might enjoy this book about English. The review makes it sound interesting. It's going on my to-read list.
The English language, which arose from humble Anglo-Saxon roots to become the lingua franca of 600 million people worldwide and the dominant lexicon of international discourse, is dead. It succumbed last month at the age of 1,617 after a long illness. It is survived by an ignominiously diminished form of itself.
A lasting online resource and a companion project for Shakespeare in American Life, a radio documentary produced by Richard Paul and narrated by Sam Waterston, airing on Public Radio International (PRI) stations beginning in April 2007.
"Studio 360 explores F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and finds out how this compact novel became the great American story of our age. Novelist Jonathan Franzen tells Kurt Andersen why he still reads it every year or two, and writer Patricia Hampl explains why its lightness is deceptive. We'll drive around the tony Long Island suburbs where Gatsby was set, and we'll hear from Andrew Lauren about his film G, which sets Gatsby among the hip-hop moguls. And Azar Nafisi describes the power of teaching the book to university students in Tehran. Readings come courtesy of Scott Shepherd, an actor who sometimes performs the entire book from memory."
This Web site gives you a variety of ways to read Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," including e-text, a chapter a day, RSS, zip files of the whole book, and mp3's.
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