All published reviewers of Wordslut are women — at least as far as I can tell. But men should read it too. Aside from gender issues, you may be wondering whether this is a technical linguistics book or a popularization. Its… Read More ›
Books
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
Mixed feelings about this non-fiction book. Maybe I should talk to someone about it. On the one hand, it’s filled with fascinating stories and views — things that make the reader close the book in order to stop and think… Read More ›
Greek to Me
The best book of the year! Yes, I know that the year is only half over, but I’m still going to nominate Mary Norris’s Greek to Me as the best book of the year. Equal parts travelogue, memoir, mythology, and… Read More ›
Machines Like Me
What? Ian McEwan writes science fiction? News to me, but I had to give this book a chance. It’s Ian McEwan, after all. Machines Like Me falls into the alternative-history subgenre, in which the author postulates that one or more… Read More ›
Virginia Woolf: “On Not Knowing Greek”
What did I know about Virginia Woolf? Not much. I knew that she wrote about needing “a room of her own,” and that she had written something about a lighthouse, and I had long ago seen Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid… Read More ›
Those reviewers on Amazon are ____________ [fill in the blank]
As Tom Lehrer famously said, “the reason most reviews on Amazon are so atrocious is that they were written by the people.” Actually, that’s not quite what he said. He actually said “the reason most folk songs are so atrocious is… Read More ›
Babel
Read and enjoy this book! Don’t argue: just do it. You’ll learn a lot and will have fun along the way. As the subtitle to Babel — Around the World in Twenty Languages — suggests, Dutch linguist Gaston Dorren takes us… Read More ›
Doing Justice
We all know that justice is blind. “And deaf and dumb,” many a commentator has added. But what is justice, and how do we ensure that it is done? Please don’t get your knowledge of our justice system from television! Read Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s… Read More ›
Computer Lib
What? A popular book about computers was published in 1974? “How is that even possible????” you ask. Computer Lib, by Ted Nelson, was indeed published in 1974, way before the World Wide Web, and it is undeniably and explicitly a popular… Read More ›
Tolkien, the movie
The new biopic, Tolkien, was clearly written for me. But you’ll enjoy it too. What, you may wonder, do I mean by claiming that it was written for me? Of course that is not literally true: the film-makers don’t know… Read More ›
The Odd Clauses
As you know, the President of the United States takes an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” And of course our current president does that faithfully — right? — but not everyone is familiar with… Read More ›
Back from New York, Part 1: The Tolkien Exhibition
“No masks, wizard staffs, scepters, axes, bow and arrows, or swords are permitted.” Yesterday was the first time I’ve ever been to a museum show with such a rule! As I had promised in this space back on June 17 of last… Read More ›
The Silk Road, the Noodle Road, and Confucius
You surely know about the Silk Road, even if (like me) you went to school before courses like World History existed. But do you know about the Noodle Road? If not, you should read Jen Lin-Liu’s excellent memoir, On the Noodle… Read More ›
Code Girls
You know how college recommendation forms often ask “What three words first come to mind about this applicant?” In the case of Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Codebreakers of World War II, the three words would be fascinating, absorbing,… Read More ›
A Truck Full of Money
As you may know, Tracy Kidder is the author of some wonderful non-fiction books, including Soul of a New Machine, House, and Mountains Beyond Mountains. (He also attended both high school and college with me, but that’s not so important.) Apparently this really is a… Read More ›
Bimbos of the Death Sun
No, it’s not what you think. This hilarious novel, by Sharyn McCrumb, is a satiric mystery about a fictional SF con (that’s science fiction convention, to you mundanes out there). The protagonist is a professor of electrical engineering at Virginia… Read More ›
Friends of Dorothy
In my naive youth, I had no idea what a “friend of Dorothy” was; in-group descriptors, after all, are always known to members of the in group (and allies) long before they are known to the general public. “Friend of… Read More ›
“Libraries are a haven…”
For more reasons than one you need to read Angela Clarke’s story from six years ago. Shoutout to my sister-in-law Brenda for alerting me to this excerpt from Clarke’s account: My own fragility revealed that a library is not just… Read More ›
Ingrid Thoft
No, “Identity Theft” is not the title of this book — though you can readily see why Barbara thought so when she glanced quickly at the cover. Identity is Ingrid Thoft’s second novel. In some ways it’s in the tradition… Read More ›
Old authors never die…
Lawrence Block’s latest novella, A Time to Scatter Stones, and one of Ruth Rendell’s last novels, The Monster in the Box, have something in common — a couple of things, in fact. It’s no coincidence that both books were written late in… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 