Not currently reading…

The TYO wanted me to read a book to him. He picked one from the Waterstones display and handed it to me. I told him it wasn’t really suitable because he wouldn’t like the pictures. I also admitted to him that I had once attempted to read it myself but hadn’t managed to finish it. He put it back where it came from and together we chose something else. Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t that I’ve got anything against Stephen Hawking, it’s just that I don’t think A Brief History of Time is the kind of book I should be reading to a three-year-old.

Toy Story 3 continued…

I have just seen my first 3D colour film (I don’t have a problem with the word ‘movie’ but after my comments about wATERSTONE’S I shall stick with Engish for now. My mother used to say ‘pictures’ and my grandparents ‘moving pictures’ so I daresay in a couple more generations there will be another expression. Some of it isn’t film anyway, is it. It’s digital). The film was (surprise surprise) Toy Story 3. I was invited to a preview in Glasgow. It was stunning. I need to read up and find out how they do 3D colour. The specs had polarised lenses, they weren’t those white cardboard folding things with red and green see-through plastic. I understand polarised light from my A-level physics. Well, I thought I did. Perfect colour, though? No, I don’t. I really don’t. It was so good that my brain took a while to adjust. Oh, and Toy Story 3 was good too. Brilliant. Written for both children and adults. Worth going to see just for Buzz’s electrical fault… no, I won’t spoil it, go and see it. If you don’t have children or grandchildren to go with, find some friends that have. Don’t wait for the DVD, you will miss the amazing 3D.

Waterstone’s renamed. We feel it.

I see that Waterstone’s has changed its name from a person to a thing. No longer Waterstone’s, it is now waterstone’s, gone from a proper noun to a improper one (though still with an apostrophe, so they haven’t lost their understanding of English useage and grammar completely). This distaste for the use of capital letters is puzzling. Language is a living thing (except French of course) and there are often good reasons for changing it. So what reason could they have for making this particular change? Surely not to impress customers, because the ones I see in the shops tend to be 30+. Perhaps they want to appeal to a younger age group. If that is the reason then they should go the whole hog. Why just drop the W to lower case when they could simply put wstns?

More about bookseller’s apostrophes here