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When we went to Wales at Easter we stayed in a very small town near Snowdonia called Gwytherin. You reach it over winding narrow roads and when you get there the sense of isolation is reinforced by the lack of television and mobile phone signal (unusual in the UK in my experience).

From here you can see the valley is very narrow (it is in between the photo where I am standing and the hill opposite, no better photo sorry!).

Amongst the information provided in our room was the story of a local saint called Winifred. As with many saint stories, Winifred was a good 7th century girl who decided to be a virgin and dedicate herself to God. But Winifred’s story gets more exciting. One day, a prince tried to press himself upon Winifred, and when she ran away from him, the prince cut off Winifred’s head in revenge. Miraculously, the girl's head reattached itself to her body, and a spring arose on the spot. Winifred then moved to Gwytherin and became abbess of a group of nuns. But her body lies over the border in Shrewsbury after it was nicked in the 12th century by some English monks.

I thought this was a first class saint story, so when I found out that the tale of Winifred’s body being moved from Gwytherin to Shrewsbury was the subject of Ellis Peters’ first Cadfael novel, A morbid taste for bones, I knew I had to read it. I’m sure I have previously tried a Cadfael novel and found it bit boring. However, I didn’t have that problem with A morbid taste for bones, which imagines that the negotiations over moving Winifred's body were enlivened by murder. It was a neat little mystery with an interesting backstory, though some of the monks appeared more like caricatures than rounded people. I admit I liked Cadfael though, perhaps because I enjoy the image of a man who has seen the world retiring to become a monk so he can spend his days gardening in between prayers.

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Mark Peters, the genius behind the blog Wordlustitude in addition to being a Contributing Editor for Verbatim: The Language Quarterly, a language columnist for Babble, and a blogger for Psychology Today, is our guest blogger this week. Below Peters encourages us to make old words hip again.

Did you hear about the nude pictures of Lindsay Lohan and Roger Clemens drinking a human growth hormone/grain alcohol smoothie?

You have? Then let me tell you what my brother’s nanny has been up to with your father’s mechanic in the gazebo. (more…)

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My 10-year-old friend Nicky is the quintessential bribable reader. When I went shopping with his mom and older sister recently, Nicky patiently spent several contented hours in a corner of a shoe department, burrowing into The Titan’s Curse, the latest volume in Rick Riordan’s Olympian-themed Percy Jackson series. Nicky’s mom had sagely bought this hefty tome for him in anticipation of our shopping spree.

For Nicky’s generation, multicultural includes imaginary worlds. Brought up on Harry Potter and undaunted by huge page numbers, he loves books in series. “The Lionboy series [by Zizou Corder] is one of my favorites,” he emailed me. “It’s about a boy who got scratched by a leopard when he was a baby. Ever since then he has been able to speak with cats. After his parents were kidnapped his journey takes him all over the world, including his native continent, Africa. He soon finds out that it’s very hard to get 5 circus lions from France to Africa at the same time he’s trying to save his parents from a mysterious corporation before they get brainwashed.”

Nicky will be busy with Deathly Hallows for the next few weeks, of course, but until he gets hooked on a series, how does he decide what books to read? “This might sound weird, but I usually choose a book by its cover. If the cover looks interesting, I read the summary.” Nicky promises to glance up from his latest read from time to time to comment again for PaperTigers on books he loves. Meanwhile, for a list of series books for kids, click here. And here, for Stephen King’s lovely goodbye to Harry Potter.

 

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