Ragged Trousered Pessimist

I made the mistake of browsing round another charity shop today, but it was an Oxfam shop so there was no danger of me buying anything: the prices they charge you would have thought poverty was history already! One book that caught my eye was The Perpetual Pessimist (An Everlasting Calendar of Gloom and Almanac of Woe) by Sagittarius? and Daniel George. Just my kind of thing - a book full of miserable, fatalistic, quotations. Anyway I decided to try and find out more about The Perpetual Pessimist tonight, and a bit of googling led me to the fascinating alphaDictionary.com. Nothing to do with the book though - it just so happens that in their list of the 100 Funniest Words in English, at number 87, is the fabulous word smellfungus which they define as "a perpetual pessimist". Apparently Smellfungus was a character created by Tristram Shandy author Laurence Sterne in A Sentimental Journey (another book I haven't read) as a satirical parody of Tobias Smollett.

alphaDictionary's list also includes abibliophobia: the fear of running out of reading material - something I certainly don't suffer from, and never will: my shelves already have more than enough books to see me out.

Meanwhile, Oxfam also had a copy of another book I haven't read yet but really should have...

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

by Robert Tressell

...a realistic depiction of working class life a hundred years ago, an indictment of capitalism, a socialist classic, and a book that has changed lives. But not mine because I still haven't read it yet.