shakespeare and more shakespeare! There’s a wealth of Shakespeare material on the web: the Encyclopedia Britannica’s site Shakespeare and the Globe-then and now, the Shakespeare Info site with material on the man, the works and the times, and Lamb’s Tales—story versions of the plays.
On the Elizabethan era, there’s also Eras of Elegance; and there’s the Shakespeare Resource Center, with much info on Elizabethan language.
Many links on this site
The Royal Shakespeare Company, the RSC, based in Stratford-on-Avon and in London, have a site here. The three-man RSC, The Reduced Shakespeare Company, perform the Complete Works of Shakespeare in no time –well, very little. Their site is here. Listen to the Othello Rap (Click on the skull or the link halfway down the page ) or watch it on video.
dictionaries
A good (U.S.) dictionary and thesaurus is the Merriam Webster; you can click on the amplifier icon to hear the words pronounced. Find the origin of the word in the Online Etymology Dictionary.
writing help
For those of you in need of more practice, find help for
useful vocabulary with exercises,
paragraph and sentence organisation,
and punctuation.
Improve your writing skills with Guide to Grammar and Writing or The Writing Center
tig’s student site
general
more links :
(Titles not mentioned elsewhere on this site)
McCrum et al, The Story of English (English language)
Bill Bryson Mother Tongue (English language)
Steven Jones The Language of the Genes (Genetics)
Steven Pinker The Language Instinct (Neurolinguistics)
Bill Bryson A Short History of Nearly Everything (Science)
Anil Ramdas Zonder Liefde Valt Best te Leven (travel, multiculturalism)
Richard Leakey The Origins of Humankind (Paleontology)
Oliver Sachs The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (Neuroscience)
Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (fiction
/Asperger’s Syndrome)
Seamus Deane Reading in the Dark (fiction, Ireland)
Bernard McLaverty Grace Notes (fiction, Ireland)
Pat Barker The Regeneration Trilogy (fiction, World War I)
Charles Frazier Cold Mountain (fiction, U.S. Civil War)
Seamus Heaney Beowulf (audiobook)
Marcel Möring Modelvliegen (transl. The Dream Room) and In Babylon
Dava Sobel, Longitude (on the race to establish longitude)
David Lodge, Consciousness and the Novel (literature and science)
Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost (history, The Congo)
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s wife (novel)
Joris Luyendijk, Het zijn net mensen (Middle East, media) translated as People Like Us
Thrillers by Katy Reichs
Peter Singer, One World—The Ethics of Globalisation
· The Hitchhikers Guide to life, the universe, and everything
· The Monty Python team still have admirers.
· Calvin and Hobbes forever!
recommended reading
odds and ends