|
Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language by Douglas HofstadterIt's like GEB but for the linguist side of me rather than the geek side. I'm certainly in praise of the music of language by Douglas Hofstadter.
I wanted this book ever since I heard about it, since I was learning French at the time, but nobody seemed to have it in stock. Three failed Amazon orders, an order on a Swiss website, and many queries in bookshops later, I eventually got a copy of it from an Amazon merchant in Germany for 9 euros including postage. I expressed my excitement to Rob, and, having recently seen Stephen Hawking, Richard Stallman and assorted Nobel laureates give talks at CERN, I remarked that maybe, somehow, we could get Douglas Hofstadter to give a talk there. Because Richard Stallman was very entertaining and he and Stephen Hawking get me geek points, but Douglas Hofstadter... well, that's someone I really wanted to see. Three days later, I checked the CERN users web page as usual to see that he was giving a talk that very afternoon. I didn't get much work done that morning. Nor did I manage to finish a translation of Ma Mignonne to give him, having left my half-finished one at home. I still haven't finished it, and I've read past the part of the book where we're asked to do without reading any further.This page has been accessed  times since 2024-05-10 14:34:50 Last updated: 2007-09-08 23:50:35
|
|
|
|
