Here are fun facts from booksrockmyworld.com, edited by yours truly: Danielle Steel is currently the best selling living author and the fourth bestselling author of all time, more than 800 million copies having sold. The floating book shop currently has four of her novels: Accident, and Five Days in Paris in hardcover, and Zoya, and Precious Gifts in paperback... Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham after his editor, Bennett Cerf, bet the author couldn't write a book using fewer than 50 different words. The good doctor was up to the challenge. The 50 words are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you. The text contains 236 words overall... In 1924 Erich von Stroheim attempted a literal screen adaptation of Frank Norris‘s novel McTeague. The film, Greed, was 9½ hours long. At studio insistence, it was cut to two hours. It flopped at the box office. It has since been restored to just over four hours. Sounds like a perfect vehicle to tackle for PBS' Masterpiece Theater... Alexandre Dumas fought his first duel at 23. During the tilt, his trousers fell down. Still, he prevailed. Apparently he was a Musketeer himself… The Oxford English Dictionary credits Charles Dickens with the first use of butter-fingers, crossfire, dustbin, fairy story, slow-coach, and whoosh.
Sign of the times: the London underground is dropping "Ladies and Gentlemen" from its announcements. "Everyone" will be used instead.
The Yankees acquired pitcher Sonny Gray from the A's. If he stays healthy, the Bronx Bombers will move up from contender to serious contender. Before the deal, I thought they were a couple of tweaks from dominance. They are now that much closer... The Red Sox made a nice acquisition in reliever Addison Reed from the Mets, but the team seems dysfunctional overall, especially offensively. It seems to miss Big Papi. If they don't fight off the Yankees this season, they may be in for another long run as second banana... The first place Dodgers also made a major move in acquiring Yu Darvish from the Rangers. Going from Ace to number two or three starter should help this underachiever... As for the Amazin's, they should be looking to foist Yoenis Cespedes on an AL team so that he can become a full time DH. His legs seem shot even though he doesn't run hard at bat or in the field.
My thanks to the family of five, who again generously overpaid for young adult novels: The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi and The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane.
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