Learning Strategies

Recent Posts

• The story of classic crime in 100 books

  By ljd42 on March 27, 2026

  

  The longer you spend trying to decode this book title, the more confused you will be. You can probably think of six different interpretations before breakfast, depending on what you think story, classic, crime, and books might mean in this… Read More ›

• First do no harm.

  By ljd42 on March 24, 2026

  

  Yes, I do know what they say about books and their covers. And I do love S.J. Rozan’s Lydia-Chin-and-Bill-Smith series. But I was still initially irritated as soon as I glimpsed the cover of the latest book in that series,… Read More ›

• At Midnight Comes the Cry

  By ljd42 on March 21, 2026

  

  As you can see in the image below, that’s the title of a novel by Julia Spencer-Fleming. If you like having the context that you can get by reading previous books in a series, you may want to go back… Read More ›

• Happy spring! Happy buck-a-shuck!

  By ljd42 on March 20, 2026

  

  According to Google AI, cioppino is “a hearty Italian-American seafood stew from San Francisco, made with a tomato and wine broth filled with a variety of fresh fish and shellfish like clams, mussels, shrimp, and crab, using whatever the “catch… Read More ›

• Famous railway modellers

  By ljd42 on March 16, 2026

  

  Or railroad modelers, as we spell it on this side of the pond. I don’t know why the Brits have such problems with spelling two perfectly good words that we ’Murricans invented: railroad and modeler. Nonetheless, railroad modelers are of… Read More ›

• Vance and Moore… back when both of them were younger

  By ljd42 on March 11, 2026

  

  Every day, it seems, I read something by or about two of our distinguished politicians: J.D. Vance and Wes Moore. Well, one of them is distinguished; the other is, well… what are the appropriate adjectives to describe someone who has… Read More ›

• The Dry

  By ljd42 on March 8, 2026

  

  This is not a review. More of a warning, I suppose. The reason it’s not a review is that I can’t write one for a book that I didn’t finish, and I didn’t even come close to finishing Jane Harper’s… Read More ›

• Picard: Welcome to the Sticks!

  By ljd42 on March 6, 2026

  

  No, no — not that Picard! Not Jean-Luc. I’m talking about the language called Picard, not the Star Trek character. You say you’ve never heard of that language? Well, read on… First, take a good look at the map below…. Read More ›

• Taunton vs. Colmar?

  By ljd42 on March 4, 2026

  

  Several decades ago — at this point I don’t remember exactly how many — I was traveling in France and happened to stop in Strasbourg and Colmar because of recommendations in a guidebook. These two are not by a long… Read More ›

• The Little Altar Boy

  By ljd42 on March 2, 2026

  

  No, not the song by that name, nor the TV series. What I’m reviewing here is the 2020 crime novel of that name, written by John Guzlowski. (Why, you ask, am I so late to read and review it? It’s… Read More ›

• A special brunch at Tavolo

  By ljd42 on March 1, 2026

  

  As I enter my 80th year of life — and no, that does not mean that I’m 80; do the math again! — Barbara and I celebrated with a delicious brunch at our favorite local restaurant, Tavolo. Barbara had a… Read More ›

• Time to snuggle

  By ljd42 on February 23, 2026

  

  Cassie and Barnaby say it’s time to snuggle together during the blizzard:

• Death of the Party

  By ljd42 on February 22, 2026

  

  Take one part gothic thriller, two parts cozy mystery clichés, and three parts Agatha Christie, stir them all up and you get Carolyn Hart’s Death of the Party. It’s a serviceable combination of those components, but what stands out is… Read More ›

• Everything you wanted to know about the Great Vowel Shift but were afraid to ask

  By ljd42 on February 8, 2026

  

  Odds are that you studied a European language back in high school — most likely Spanish or French, possibly German or Italian — and you quickly realized that the vowels in those languages are not pronounced as they are in… Read More ›

• Streets of Minneapolis

  By ljd42 on January 28, 2026

• Definitely a bonded pair

  By ljd42 on January 25, 2026

  

• Who’s better at understanding written English — you or some random teen in South Korea?

  By ljd42 on January 22, 2026

  

  Statistically speaking, as a reader of this blog, you are most likely a native speaker of English, so surely you must understand written English better than a random South Korean teen. Right? Well, maybe so. Or maybe not. A recent… Read More ›

• Cassie being Cute on Purpose

  By ljd42 on January 20, 2026

  

• Will the real John McWhorter please stand up? (No, no, that’s not the real one; that’s the AI John McWhorter!)

  By ljd42 on January 18, 2026

  

  John McWhorter is a professor of linguistics at Columbia University who is both a professional linguist and a popular linguist. In other words, he writes both for his colleagues and for the general public. He also podcasts for the latter… Read More ›

• ‹ Older Entries