Stella Dorothea Gibbons (1902-1989) was an English author, journalist, and poet.  She established her reputation with her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm (1932), which won the literary Prix Femina Étranger and has been reprinted many times.  Although she was active as a writer for half a century, none of her later 22 novels or other literary works—which included a sequel to Cold Comfort Farm—achieved the same critical or popular success.  Much of her work was long out of print before a modest revival in the 21st century.  The daughter of a London doctor, Gibbons had a turbulent and often unhappy childhood.  After an indifferent school career she trained as a journalist, and worked as a reporter and features writer, mainly for the Evening Standard and The Lady.  Her first book, published in 1930, was a collection of poems which was well received, and through her life she considered herself primarily a poet rather than a novelist.  After Cold Comfort Farm, a satire on the genre of rural-themed "loam and lovechild" novels popular in the late 1920s, most of Gibbons's novels were based within the middle-class suburban world with which she was familiar.  Gibbons became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1950.  Her style has been praised by critics for its charm, barbed humour and descriptive skill, and has led to comparison with Jane Austen.  The impact of Cold Comfort Farm dominated her career, and she grew to resent her identification with the book to the exclusion of the rest of her output.  Widely regarded as a one-work novelist, she and her works have not been accepted into the canon of English literature—partly, other writers have suggested, because of her detachment from the literary world and her tendency to mock it.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Gibbons

cold comfort   Slight consolation or encouragement in the face of a reverse.  This dates back to the 14th century. E. E. Allit. includes the line, "Lorde!  colde watz his cumfort."  It was used in early literature by several authors, notable Chaucer and Shakespeare.  http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/81550.html

In the beginning was the Proto-Indo-European root “ten,” meaning “to stretch” (source of the adjective and verb “tense”).  From that came the Latin verb “tendere” (meaning “to stretch, point, direct, touch, offer”), and we were off and running.  With the help of some common Latin prefixes, we ended up with scads of “tend” words, including “attend,” “contend,” “distend,” “intend,” “extend,” “portend,” “pretend,” “subtend” and, of course, “bartend.”  English actually has two verbs we might call “just plain tend,” which are considered separate words although they both come from “tendere.”  “Tend” in the sense of “to care for, watch over” is actually an aphetic, or cropped, form of “attend,” which we borrowed from Old French in the 15th century and rests on the sense of “stretching” one’s mind, ears, eyes, etc., “towards” an object, person, etc.  Our other “tend,” meaning “to have an inclination to do something” (“Bob tends to ignore instructions”), appeared in English around the same time.  “Intend” comes from the Latin “intendere,” meaning “to turn one’s attention to” (literally “to stretch toward”) which also included the sense of “to plan.”  “Extend,” which appeared in the 14th century, was derived from the Latin “extendere,” meaning “to stretch out, expand.”  The original, now obsolete, sense of “extend” implied strong stretching or straining, but the weaker sense of “straighten or extend” (as one “extends” one’s arm) had appeared by the late 14th century.  The sense of “prolong in duration” first appeared in the late 16th century. Today we also use “extend” in senses including the geographic sense of “cover” (as in “His sales territory extends as far as California”) and “hold out, put forward” in (as in “He extended an offer of settlement to the victim”).  “Pretend,” which also appeared in English in the 14th century, comes ultimately from the Latin verb “praetendere” (“prae” meaning “before,” plus our old pal “tendere,” to stretch).  One of the senses of the Latin verb, carried into Anglo-Norman and from there to English, was “to put forward as a pretext or reason; to deceptively allege.”  So “pretend” has a long history of deception.  http://www.word-detective.com/2015/08/extend-pretend-etc/  See also http://membean.com/wrotds/ten-hold and http://wordinfo.info/unit/2808

The personal history of Phaedrus (15 BC-50 AD), a first century Roman writer, has been lost in the mist of history, but his fables in verse based on those of Aesop will live for countless generations to come.  Fables are one of the oldest forms of storytelling that have come down to us and survived through the ages.  They appear in cultures throughout the world, including those of ancient India and the Mediterranean region.  The oldest form of storytelling is the myth.  One style of myth is referred to an "animism," where every object, human or otherwise, assumes a personality.  Animals, rocks, weather phenomenon, as well as man are each given human characteristics.  This primitive form held no particular relationship to religion or science, but was told only for its entertainment value.  Although less primitive in style than the animistic tale, the Aesop Fable has its foundation in this form of myth.  The form recognized as the Western tradition is thought to begin with Aesop in the 6th century BC.  He created his fables by applying personalities to his characters regardless of their humanity.  These are learned tales, in written form—not handed down by word of mouth.  Each fable presents its reader with a double meaning and is intended to teach a moral lesson.  http://biography.yourdictionary.com/phaedrus

Find source of "things are not always what they seem" and "added insult to injury" at https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Phaedrus_(fabulist)

An added attraction for one person is an added detraction for another.  Do you want to hear recorded background music with a loud mechanized percussive beat?  Is it pleasing--or is it annoying?

The Diary of Anne Frank has been put online by a French politician and an academic, who cite EU law and the importance of intellectual freedom.  The Basel-based Anne Frank Foundation is considering legal action, saying it still holds the copyright.  “Anne Frank died in 1945 [in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany], therefore her diary should enter the public domain on January 1, 2016,” argues Olivier Ertzscheid, a lecturer at the University of Nantes, who has published the original Dutch text on his blog.  At the same time, Isabelle Attard from the French Green Party put it online on her website.  According to French law, which conforms to an EU directive, a work falls into the public domain on January 1, 70 years after the death of its author or last surviving author in the case of multiple authors.  But as copyright law is determined at a national level, each country has its own rules, resulting in differences in protection periods.   “According to Swiss copyright law, copyright protection expires 70 years after the death of the author,” Emanuel Meyer from the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property told swissinfo.ch.  The Anne Frank Foundation (AFF) sees things differently, pointing to the applicable French copyright law, which says a work first published posthumously before 1995 remains protected for 50 years after the initial publication.  Thomas Stephens

Read much more at http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/literature-and-law_uploading-of-anne-frank-s-diary-ruffles-legal-feathers/41880180

Though one of his songs is titled "I Can't Read", David Bowie was actually quite the voracious reader.  In 2013, he posted a list of his top 100 favorites on his Facebook page. Lauren Weiss  Find David Bowie's Top 100 Reads at http://www.nypl.org/blog/2016/01/11/david-bowies-top-100-books

 Here is a listing of all the full-moon names, as well as their corresponding dates and times (for the Eastern Time zone) for 2016.  Link to 3:10 video  Watch: The Full Moon - Why It Happens and What It Means]  Joe Rao  http://www.space.com/31699-full-moon-names-2016-explained.html

Walk like a penguin.  Why?  Because it's wise to waddle on ice.  Waddling will help you avoid creating an oblique angle with your legs, which often leads to a nasty fall.  Keep in mind, it doesn't always work—not even for penguins.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tcx6YyXvvRI  Tablet Infographics—an illustration and design company that says it's "dedicated to visualizing the things that are difficult to explain" —put together a graphic  http://visual.ly/how-walk-ice to show how shifting body weight on ice will decrease the chances of taking a frosty fall.  According to the graphic, when a person normally walks on ice, the way he or she forces each leg to support body weight is not perpendicular to the surface of the ice.  To avoid taking a tumble, keep your center of gravity over your front leg.  Go ahead, try the penguin shuffle.  http://mentalfloss.com/article/61340/why-are-penguins-so-good-walking-ice

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1414  January 25, 2016  On this date in 1858, the Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn was played at the marriage of Queen Victoria's daughter, Victoria, and Friedrich of Prussia.  On this date in 1881, Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell formed the Oriental Telephone Company.  On this date in 1890,  Nellie Bly completed her round-the-world journey in 72 days.  On this date in 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan became the first community in the United States to fluoridate its drinking water to prevent tooth decay.