As we mentioned earlier, the long list of finalists for the Man Booker International Prize was announced today by judging panel chair Jane Smiley in a press conference held at the New York Public Library. Flavorwire pal Ron Hogan did some great Twittereporting from the conference; there’s a lot of chatter around the scarcity of East Asian and Middle Eastern writers on this and past Booker Int’l lists.
Speaking of lists and Brits, The Times has a piece on 10 literary one-hit wonders. Apparently, “one-hit” refers exclusively to novels, because the list includes Oscar Wilde, J.D. Salinger, and Sylvia Plath. Who needs plays, short stories, or poetry?
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At the end of the day we personally find ourselves peppering conversations with the same fairly unique phrases. It’s a nightmare, and with all due respect we pray that nobody has noticed at this moment in time.
The Oxford University Corpus is a database of overused buzzwords pulled from books, magazines, broadcast, online media and other sources. A new book called DAMP SQUID: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE LAID BARE by JEREMY BUTTERFIELD reveals the top 10 tiresome phrases that are currently on their abort list:
1 – At the end of the day
2 – Fairly unique
3 – I personally
4 – At this moment in time
5 – With all due respect
6 – Absolutely
7 – It’s a nightmare
8 – Shouldn’t of
9 – 24/7
10 – It’s not rocket science
“I’m looking at the list now, and the only phrase on it that I’ve actually heard or seen recently is ’24/7,’ which wasn’t even that annoying,” responds RON HOGAN, creator of Beatrice.com. “A really up-to-date list would probably include more phrases from the Internets like ‘for the win,’ ‘I can has [X],’ or ‘OMG.’ Which makes this list an epic fail.”
After the jump, Flavorwire attempts to best Oxford researchers with seven additional phrases. Maybe we shouldn’t of, but we absolutely had to try. Come on, it’s not rock science.
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