hornbook: A primer which was popular in England between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Consisting of a single sheet of paper or vellum mounted on wood, on which were printed the alphabet, the Lord’s Prayer, and Roman numerals, the hornbook derived its name from the protective covering of horn over the sheet.
The term is used by Thomas Dekker in his Gull’s Hornbook
Literary Terms: A Dictionary
Why doesn’t “exciting” mean “formerly making reference to”?
After commenting on a post defending MFA programs at Fiction Writers Review, I realized that the issue deserved a blog entry of its own. The post was itself commentary on a Huffington Post story by author Lev Raphael and, after having read the full article, I was more convinced than ever that I needed to write a detailed rebuttal.
God bless Kassia Krozser of BookSquare for adding her voice to a growing chorus calling out the nakedness of the Emperor.
Yes, publishers themselves are helping to devalue books with their poor business decisions, by pushing awful books by famous people hoping we won’t remember, with speculative bidding frenzies that abandon all sense of reality, etc.
Of course, it’s a rant, but go read it.
