There is no way anyone is going to convince me that that really pissed you off. 
Getting back to the topic of the thread, I first read Little Women when I was only 7 or 8 years old and re-read it a number of times through my teens. That whole time I believed that the “little books” the March girls received as Christmas presents and were encouraged to read every night were copies of Pilgrim’s Progress. I thought this because the characters and narrator made many references to Pilgrim’s Progress (a lot of the chapter titles are even taken from PP), so that book was clearly a big deal to the March family.
It wasn’t until I was in grad school and taking a course in children’s literature that I realized the “little books” were copies of the New Testament. I can’t even claim I figured this out on my own, it was mentioned in one of the assigned readings before we got to the actual book. I don’t know if I’d have questioned my childhood assumption otherwise, although while re-reading Little Women for my class it did strike me as very obvious that the “little books” were meant to be New Testaments. When Jo finds her Christmas gift it’s described as “that beautiful story of the best life ever lived”, and the girls are always being encouraged to read from their “little books” and apply this reading to their own lives. Since I knew Pilgrim’s Progress was a Christian book it had made sense to me that the girls would be encouraged to study the moral lessons presented in the story, but it makes a lot MORE sense if the book is the New Testament. Especially since the girls are the daughters of a minister.
In defense of my young self, I’d never seen a copy of the New Testament alone, and the Bible as a whole is hardly “little”. Alcott also never spelled out exactly what these books were, probably because her intended audience would have gotten it right away. Google Books tells me that in the text of Little Women no “little book” is ever described as a “Bible” (which without the Old Testament I guess wouldn’t be an accurate label anyway), that the word “Jesus” never appears in Little Women at all, and that there’s only one reference late in the book to Amy owning a “little Testament”.
We need an :apoplexy: face. 
There’s a rapper called “Mos Def”.
Two obvious things I didn’t realize about this name until I started watching The Wire:
- The “Mos” is not pronounced the same as “Mos Eisley”.
- It’s short for “Most Definitely”.
I think.
Fortunantly, I saved myself from major embarrassment by never being in a position where I had to reference the guy.
Interesting! Their father was a minister, after all. I, too, read Little Women over and over many times since I got a beautiful first copy at age 12. There were a lot of words and references and ideas I didn’t understand until much, much later. I seriously think there ought to be a glossary of Victoriana included. Who today knows anything about charabancs, blancmange, crinoline, or Pilgrim’s Progress (I had to figure out on my own it was a popular book they read!). And am I correct in inferring that at the time, the German language, art, culture, etc. was considered the very zenith of culture and intellectualism? Germans seemed to be held in very high regard, and so is that a reason for Jo to marry her professor - that she chose the life of the mind (Prof. Baer) over the life of materialism (Laurie)?
I recently discovered that combing MAO inhibitor drugs with certain foods, including organ meets, legumes, and red wine, causes a serious and often fatal rise in blood pressure.
So remember folks: NEVER take your anti-depressants after downing a meal of liver, fava beans and a nice Chianti (slurp, slurp).
My first exposure to that person was in the movie The Italian Job with, um, what’s his name, Dirk Diggler and the other guy, um, Bruce Banner. Anyway, he plays a guy with partial hearing loss in the film, and, thinking it was meant to pay respect to the actor’s actual disability, I presumed that his name was short for alMOSt DEaF.
Imagine my chagrin.
So I’m responding to another thread about Nelly, and I find this video:
At , the D.J. (Cedric the Entertainer) says that the roof is on fire. the crowd’s response is “we don’t need no water, let the motherf*cker burn (Rockmaster Scott and the Dynamic 3)”.
In the movie, Head of State (which features an Black Alderman being nominated for and winning the Presidency), the same scene happens, except the crowd (affluent white people) respond this way:
Screams…Panic…Fire Department being called.
LOL
You just reminded me of a less long-lasting misinterpretation I made when I first read Little Women. At the beginning of the book, after the girls give their mother her Christmas presents, it says that Mrs. March fastens the flower Beth gave her “in her bosom”. At the time I had the vague idea that “bosom” was a synonym for “bottom” or maybe “hips”. I gave some thought to how one might wear a flower there. I was too young and innocent to think of the possibilities that are coming to mind now, and soon decided it must mean that the flower was tucked into the sash of her dress.
I don’t think I labored under this misapprehension for long, because I can’t remember being confused about “bosom” any other time in my life. I may have looked it up in the dictionary, or I may have figured it out in context thanks to Little Women. It’s used several other times in the book where it more obviously means “heart” or “chest”. But when I think of that scene from Little Women I still picture Mrs. March with a rose tucked into her sash.
It did only strike me while writing this that the rose was probably pinned onto Mrs. March’s dress like a corsage rather than tucked into her cleavage. A minister’s wife probably wouldn’t have been wearing a low-cut dress, and sticking a rose stem between your breasts sounds like a bad idea.
I am replying to this over a month after it was posted, but I couldn’t let this slide.
Did you ever read the Sherlock Holmes stories? Sherlock and Watson had a very good relationship. Sherlock was cold, sure, and he had his flaws, but it was apparent that he cared for Watson very much.
Also, Sherlock never said, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” He said things were elementary, and he used the phrase “my dear Watson,” but it’s a misconception that “Elementary, my dear Watson,” was some kind of trademark phrase in Doyle’s stories.
Sort of like “Play it again, Sam!”
I’ve been told/read somewhere (here?) that the phrase in question was used in early Sherlock Holmes movies/TV shows, despite never appearing in the original stories, and that’s how it filtered into the public consciousness.
Oh, and just because: Wassup Holmes?
I learned just yesterday that the first person to use the phrase was PG Wodehouse. In Psmith, Journalist (1915) he has
Fancy that.
I just realized that 70’s westerns filmed in Italy were called spaghetti westerns because spaghetti is an Italian dish :smack:. (I’ve always known that spaghetti is Italian, but I never knew why Italian westerns were called Spaghetti westerns until a few days ago.)
Last week while watching Poker After Dark it occurred to me that the sit-com Full House was named after a poker hand :smack::smack:.
I wonder if referring to the New Testament as “little book” is a reference to referring to the Bible as “the good book” (or even “the book”, sometimes)?
I suppose it’s possible, but to my mind the most obvious interpretation is that they were, in fact, simply small in size. I can’t speak with any authority on Massachusetts in the 1860s, but certainly here in the UK in the first half of the 20th century, pocket-sized editions of the New Testament used to be very common – they were given as confirmation presents, or school prizes and so forth. When I was a child, we had two or three copies around the house, and they were by far the smallest books we had. And we weren’t what you would call religious; they were just things that accumulated. I’ve got one here, in fact: it’s three inches by four and three quarters by three quarters.
Those little pocket-sized New Testaments are still around. Once a year or so, the Gideons come to campus and hand them out from the street corners.
I saw Max Von Essen in Dance of the Vampires in 2003.
I certainly knew that Thomas Von Essen was the NYC Fire Commissioner during 9/11.
On Saturday I read a book of essays that explained Thomas is Max’s father!:smack: I never made the connection.
And now the phrase “ramen western” is starting to crop up, referring to westerns made in Japan. Sukiyaki Western Django is the only one I’ve seen, but it’s worth checking out. A friend asked, “Is that set in western US or western Japan?” but we decided it was just sort of set in The West.
Thanks, but I’m really not into watching westerns.
I was just noting that, like spaghetti westerns (so named for a dish in Italy, where they were filmed), westerns made in Japan are being called ramen westerns (named for a dish in Japan).