When Chaucer praised his Clerk by writing that “gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche,” he probably never pictured the poor dude trying to do both of those things while also holding down a full-time job. Such is the state of things here at “Quid Plura?” headquarters. Those of you who have pre-ordered Becoming Charlemagne II: The Curse of Lothar’s Gold will have to wait longer than I’d hoped. Fortunately, you won’t have to wait long at all to hear the pitter-patter of sundry links.
At The Economist, “Charlemagne” ponders the global ascendancy of English and the counterintuitive downsides for native speakers.
Commenters at the New York Times travel blog hate this guy who begs his way across Europe.
Lingwë mulls over the plurals “oxen” and “foxes.”
The world’s hardest-working royalty-blogger is now on Twitter.
K.A. Laity is writing a novel 500 words at a time.
Steve Donoghue reviews a new translation of Boethius. (One hopes it abounds in theology and geometry.)
Ephemeral in New York recalls the tuberculosis of yesteryear.
“Quid Plura?” readers fall into two camps: people who want to know how Icelandic sheep’s head jelly is made, and terrorists.
My Life in Books finds an odd little book: a short story in twelve languages.
L.C. McCabe finds a fantasy adaptation of Orlando Furioso with a really awful cover.
On Valentine’s Day, Alpheus remembered how the Brownings fell in love.
Speak Swedish? Know your runes? The Riksantikvarieämbetet is looking for runologists.
Did you know the Beach Boys recorded in German? I sure didn’t.
Call your cable provider if you think you need the Clive Clemmons Inappropriate Heavy Metal Response Channel.
Quid Plura? 
K.A. Laity is writing a novel 500 words at a time.
I usually shoot for a thousand words at a time, which generally results in responses like the third paragraph of this post. But on some days I sputter and on some I fly way past 1,000 words.
“Quid Plura?” readers fall into two camps: people who want to know how Icelandic sheep’s head jelly is made, and terrorists.
Is it possible to be both?
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I should clarify that that novel is *one* of the ones I’m writing at present. I have a 60K novel finishing up (took about 2-1/2 months), revising another that took 16 months, while working on various academic pieces, five blogs, Twitter and Facebook. Yet I remained convinced that I am a fundamentally lazy person…
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Jeff,
A friend of mine actually has a copy of that book on her bookshelf and is going to lend it to me the next time I see her.
I also inspired another friend to buy a used copy of it via Amazon’s book dealers. I have no idea whether or not the book is any good, but man oh man, that artist’s rendering has got to be one of the worst I have ever seen of a mythological creature.
Thanks for the link.
Linda
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