New Read

I'm trying to alternate my reading between fiction and non right now. Having just finished Steinbeck's The Pearl I'm now on my way into C.S. Lewis's Studies in Words. I just got through his 24-page introduction which, in classic Lewis form, laid out quite clearly where he was and wasn't gonna go (girl). Not surprisingly, he's isn't concerned with the detailed etymologies of every word or comparing phonetics in order to make connections. His focus is, like most of his writing, on the practical; how language and words affect and are used and misused by Joe Simpson down the street (or Neville Galvin in Lewis's case).

I'm especially interested in if/how he treats the tendency we have to interpret phrases like "I don't like butter" as "I have a thing against butter." He touches briefly on the taking of disinterested as "bored" in the introduction, so I'm hoping for some mo.

I'll leave you with this little bit:

Of course, any man is entitled to say he prefers the poems he makes for himself out of his mistranslations to the poems the writers intended. I have no quarrel with him. He need have none with me. Each to his taste.