“When a language disappears, a unique way of understanding the world vanishes with it.” If I had to pick a single sentence from Lorna Gibb’s Rare Tongues, that sentence (164 pages into the text) might be my choice. But the… Read More ›
Books
The Plinko Bounce
You probably know what the title refers to, but I certainly had no idea what “Plinko” meant when I started reading this mystery a couple of weeks ago. In fact, I was halfway through the book when I finally found… Read More ›
Th1rt3en
Yes, the title of this book really is Th1rt3en, not Thirteen. It looks better in all-upper case as printed on the cover: TH1RT3EN. And, as you see in the image below, in case you’re missing the point, the digits 1… Read More ›
“A Murder Most French” and “A Fashionably French Murder”
Just over a year ago I reviewed Mastering the Art of French Murder, the first in a new series by Colleen Cambridge. Subsequently I read the next two volumes in that series: A Murder Most French and A Fashionably French… Read More ›
Gobsmacked!
As you can see in the image below, Gobsmacked! is the title of the latest book by Ben Yagoda. The subtitle, The British Invasion of American English, provides (as usual) much more information than the title itself. Of course those… Read More ›
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, a.k.a. Прекрасная глупая попытка
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor is a sequel to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, which I reviewed last month. These books are similar but different, if you know what I mean. I very much enjoyed both of them, but I would never… Read More ›
The Future of the Republican Party (as written 61 and 75 years ago)
How did the Republican party get into the condition it’s in today? And where is it headed? Let’s start by looking at what was being said in 1964 and in 1950, in a book that I was assigned to read… Read More ›
Pronoun Trouble
“I never use pronouns,” says one Susan Sparks Smith in a Facebook post. I don’t know her, but I was sorely tempted to reply “You just did.” That’s just one example of Pronoun Trouble, the new popular linguistics book by… Read More ›
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
Poor Hank Green: if you ask a random person who Hank Green is, the likely answer is either “the brother of John Green” or “never heard of him.” I suppose sibling rivalry is inevitable when your brother sells 23,000,000 copies… Read More ›
The Talented Miss Farwell
Who, you may ask, is this Miss Farwell? Probably the protagonist of a novel by Emily Gray Tedrowe, right? Right. Let me explain (without spoilers!): Becky Farwell buys far too many original works of art — more than she can… Read More ›
Pretty as a Picture
When you look at the front cover of Elizabeth Little’s Pretty as a Picture, you notice an apt blurb by Laura Lippman (see image below): “A twisty story, a cinephile’s delight, a knockout of a heroine. I loved it.” Let’s… Read More ›
My 10 Favorite Books Redux
When I just happened to be looking at a post I wrote 17 years ago (for reasons that I will explain below), I was surprised to realize that today’s list of my favorite books wouldn’t be very different from that… Read More ›
Good Lieutenant by E.J. Copperman
Good Lieutenant is the sixth, the best, the most serious, and (alas) the last novel in Jeff Cohen’s Jersey Girl series of mysteries. But — wait, wait! important question here, I hear you cry — you said Jeff Cohen but… Read More ›
Baskerville!
Four years ago I wrote a post about the Baskerville typeface, Of course my post had to be titled The Font of the Baskervilles; I had no choice. And now we have an entire book called Baskerville, subtitled The Biography… Read More ›
The Law of Innocence
You’re wondering why Mickey Haller, the eponymous Lincoln Lawyer, would choose to represent himself. He even quotes the maxim that my father happens to have taught me when I was 11 years old or so: “He who represents himself has… Read More ›
City Unseen
City Unseen: New Visions of an Urban Planet is an amazing collection of 100 annotated images by Karen C. Seto and Meredith Reba. Is it a collection of artistic images, you ask, or is it a collection of maps? Art… Read More ›
The Guest List
Despite having multiple viewpoint characters (a practice I’m not usually fond of), Lucy Foley’s The Guest List is both absorbing and easy to read. It is definitely the sort of book where you should not read reviews ahead of time,… Read More ›
Overboard
Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski series has been going on forever — or so it seems. Actually it’s been 43 years now, but that’s practically forever in the publishing world. After reading the earliest dozen or two, I started to get… Read More ›
Polostan
Of course I knew that I had to read Polostan as soon as I saw that the author was Neal Stephenson. His 19 previously published novels are all IMHO first-rate — ranging from 1984’s The Big U to 2021’s Termination… Read More ›
The Good Detective
Sometimes you just have to trust your instincts. I had checked out a copy of The Good Detective from the library on the strength of the review in the New York Times, which said this: John McMahon is one of… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 