Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 33

• The Japanese Agatha Christie?

  By ljd42 on September 21, 2021

  How to begin? Maybe with an executive summary: The Decagon House Murders, a 1987 novel by Yukito Ayatsuji, is a locked-room mystery explicitly based (in two different ways) on Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel And Then There Were None. I enjoyed… Read More ›

• Outdoor dining at 224 Boston Street

  By ljd42 on September 20, 2021

  Yesterday evening Barbara and I had a delicious dinner at 224 Boston Street. They’ve set up half a dozen very sturdy wooden booths on the sidewalk, all nicely separately and totally different from the flimsy, temporary feel you get at… Read More ›

• What is the secret to writing a successful popularization?

  By ljd42 on September 19, 2021

  What? You think I’m going to reveal the secret? No way! That’s partly because I don’t actually know the secret—but we can explore the question, as sparked by a recent post by Gretchen McCulloch, known for her surprise best-seller Because… Read More ›

• After reading The Paradise Affair by Bill Pronzini, I don’t want to visit Hawaii!

  By ljd42 on September 18, 2021

  You do need a little light reading to start the new year off right, don’t you? Then you need Bill Pronzini’s latest mystery, The Paradise Affair. From the title of the book you might expect it to be about Hawaii…. Read More ›

• September flowers on Ashmont Hill

  By ljd42 on September 17, 2021

  Flowers are still blooming on Ashmont Hill in mid-September! Spotted on yesterday’s walk:

• We need more confusion, not less! (Strategic confusion, that is.)

  By ljd42 on September 16, 2021

  Schools aren’t built around confusion. We reward students for speed and accuracy (the way we average grades and set rigid deadlines). Our standardized tests place a high value in speed and accuracy rather than nuance and confusion. We value teachers… Read More ›

• Hit and Run, by Lawrence Block

  By ljd42 on September 14, 2021

  Larry Block will teach you how to write. He can even make a hit man sympathetic. I don’t just mean that Block provides a model of good writing—though he does do that—but also that he has elsewhere written explicit advice… Read More ›

• Did the ancestors of today’s Middle Easterners come from Africa?

  By ljd42 on September 12, 2021

  Of course they did, you reply. But not so fast! There has, of course, been a lot of interest lately in tracing one’s DNA to find out one’s individual ancestry. But I haven’t seen much about the results of doing… Read More ›

• Star Trek Action, by Terry J. Erdmann

  By ljd42 on September 10, 2021

  Channel your inner geek by finding out every little detail behind the scenes in a 120-second segment of Star Trek. That’s what you get—three times—in this gorgeous book. But the intended audience clearly doesn’t include me. The problem is that… Read More ›

• Parachutes, by Kelly Yang

  By ljd42 on September 8, 2021

  Helicopter parents. Tiger moms. Parachutes. What do all these metaphors have in common? If you’ve taught in a suburb like Weston—or in an elite private school—you may know the answer. I certainly knew about helicopter parents, having experienced altogether too… Read More ›

• Emoji and hand gestures

  By ljd42 on September 7, 2021

  There’s a lot of misinformation about emoji(s) floating around. Aside from the question of whether the plural is “emojis” or “emoji,” we have plenty of people who think the word is etymologically related to “emoticon” and “emo”—but it’s not! The… Read More ›

• Dim sum brunch at Chau Chow!

  By ljd42 on September 5, 2021

  Barbara and I just got back from brunch at Chau Chow, which has finally re-opened for dine-in dim sum—weekends only for now, and no carts, just ordering from the menu. This is actually an interesting trade-off, as carts let you… Read More ›

• Morning glories!

  By ljd42 on September 3, 2021

  Morning glories for a glorious morning after the storm has passed!

• (Re)Born in the USA: An Englishman’s love letter to his chosen home, by Roger Bennett

  By ljd42 on September 2, 2021

  “Tracy Chapman saved my life.” That’s the dramatic opening sentence of Chapter 32 of Roger Bennett’s terrific memoir of his life in Liverpool and his decision to emigrate to the USA and become a naturalized American citizen. As a middle-class… Read More ›

• Zoe Rosenthal is not Lawful Good, by Nancy Werlin

  By ljd42 on August 31, 2021

  A shout-out to Aaron Gacs for teaching me what a character alignment chart is! That was four or five years ago. If he hadn’t done that, I would never have understood the title of this captivating novel. If, as the… Read More ›

• Fake news! (Is it clickbait? Or have archaeologists discovered the Trojan Horse? Judge for yourself!)

  By ljd42 on August 29, 2021

  Did you believe in Santa Claus when you were a kid? How about the Bible? God? The Norse gods? Satan? Zeus? Evolution? Grimm’s fairy tales? The quadratic formula? The Trojan War? Everything your parents told you? Everything your teachers told… Read More ›

• A Prime Mistake

  By ljd42 on August 27, 2021

  To be sure, nine, along with three and seven, are great favorites of European folklore. No one knows for sure why just those numerals achieved such prominence. The reference to the fact that all of them are primes does not go far.  So says… Read More ›

• Visiting all 2563 train stations in the UK!

  By ljd42 on August 25, 2021

  We all know now that Dorchester’s own Maya Jonas-Silver is the new world record holder for visiting every single station on the Green, Blue, Orange and Red Lines in the shortest time; it took her 7 hours, 4 minutes, and… Read More ›

• Easttown? Where’s that? And what (or who) is Mare? And what’s so special about the Philly accent?

  By ljd42 on August 23, 2021

  Four questions in that headline—and it isn’t even Passover. You may or may not know that the distinguished linguist John McWhorter’s wonderful podcast Lexicon Valley recently moved from Slate to BookSmart. Not that you care. But what you do (or… Read More ›

• A return to Venice: Transient Desires, by Donna Leon

  By ljd42 on August 21, 2021

  Venezia! La Serenissima! Two and a half years ago was when I most recently reviewed one of Donna Leon’s many Venetian novels. That was The Temptation of Forgiveness. Somehow I had missed Unto Us a Son is Given, which came… Read More ›

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