Monday 4 February 2008

A love of words


Breath: ceramic tablet (intentionally broken) 1993

I was visiting Francesca's blog and lo and behold, we both share an unusual collecting habit... word and phrases from books. Read her post here.and you can see how she keeps her sentences in book form. Here's how I keep mine...


a little packet of words about animals


my packets of words (they usually hang on a pin board)

I was typing up a comment to her and realised I should get double value by using it here also...

Hi Francesca, I love your book of words and sentences. I do this too but mine are in little hand made packets each with with a themes like nature, interiors, animals, thoughts. I't's obsessive stuff isn't it. If I can't cut them up I write them down, but there's something about having the actual page that feels extra special. I have some great one's from a cheesy crime thriller where they described the scenes of the crimes brilliantly describing chandeliers, echoing rooms with faded curtains... so beautiful out of context.

I agree, weather related snippets can be really lovely. I especially like ones set in countries where the winds have beautiful names like Levanter, Mistral and Simoon (Levanter was on my list of loved words in '06). It's all I can do to keep the scissors away from Mr P's Patrick O'Brian books, they have lots of weather references many of which are nautical which adds to the appeal, and all said in lovely early 19th century language.

8 comments:

Francesca said...

oh i love your pictures! almost as lovely as the words themselves. i left a reply to you in my comment section about having 3 copies of 'mrs eliot' so i don't feel bad about cutting it up!

thanks for the mention, i'm going to add a postscript to my post.

Bibbi said...

I'm behind, congratulations to 50 000 readers, may you soon have 50 000 more!

Anonymous said...

hi cally, thank you coming over to my blog, so i could find out about you. this sentence collecting thing from books is a beautiful idea. i wonder, why i never thought about this before!

greetings to you in beautiful scotland, anne.

miss milki said...

Lol! I do this too but I'm not half as organised so I've little phrases scribbled in notebooks all over the place and yeah a few cut up pieces too which I use to make collages. I hate destroying books though, I only cut up magazines!

miss milki said...

pressed publish too soon! meant to say the little packets are so, so cute!

mansuetude said...

Well you KNOW i am going to love love that broken tablet with those words on it!!! If you only knew... :)

Cally said...

miss milki
i know, cutting up books is the haredst thing, i only do it if they are already ruined in some way, usually they have been found on buses, disguarded because of torn pages or swollen by coffee spills (which i think looks wonderful). i only once bought a book in good condition specifically to cut up, it was called something like 'man and the environment' and it had lots of sentences that were specific to the environmental nature of my work - i still feel guilty about it!

I like Francesca's way of doing it where she has 3 copies and cuts one, I'd have felt less guilty about it if I'd had an intact copy.

Christine Clemmensen said...

Wow! These pictures are beautiful:))

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