Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 8

• Welcome to your forever home, Abigail!

  By ljd42 on January 24, 2025

  

  Five days ago, timid little Abigail met us at MSPCA/Angell and agreed to adopt us. From an all-time high of six cats to a low of one cat, we had now been completely catless for nearly three months at that… Read More ›

• Overboard

  By ljd42 on January 22, 2025

  

  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 ›

• A close-up view of Neighborhood #3, The ’Burbs

  By ljd42 on January 18, 2025

  

  This month’s exploration of my model railroad layout is our third look at an individual neighborhood of Rose City. Back in the 1940s some developers noticed that there was a lot of still undeveloped property just north of PowerTown. Clearly… Read More ›

• Men can say no.

  By ljd42 on January 15, 2025

• Polostan

  By ljd42 on January 13, 2025

  

  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 ›

• Dylan

  By ljd42 on January 8, 2025

  

  Like Bob Dylan himself, the new biopic A Complete Unknown has generated a lot of controversy. So I had to go see it yesterday, sitting in a comfy seat in a Dorchester movie theatre surrounded by hundreds of Dylan fans…. Read More ›

• Wherever you go, there’s always someone Jewish.

  By ljd42 on January 6, 2025

  These days, if you just see the title, you probably worry that the song is going to be some antisemitic diatribe on X/Twitter. But 25 years ago that wouldn’t have been your first impression; you would correctly have thought that… Read More ›

• What was the 2024 Word of the Year?

  By ljd42 on January 1, 2025

  

  Time’s up! Now that 2024 is over, what do you think was the Word of the Year (WOTY)? Actually, there are many possibilities, largely because many different organizations determine their own answer to that question. But you should first ponder… Read More ›

• Say “Happy new year!” in 27 languages, won’t you?

  By ljd42 on December 31, 2024

  That’s Afrikaans, Basque, Breton, Chinese (Mandarin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, and Welsh, of course. https://youtu.be/iygnwZoxNHw

• The traditional mid-day Christmas dinner…

  By ljd42 on December 25, 2024

  

  …at Chau Chow today: Yum, yum!

• The Good Detective

  By ljd42 on December 23, 2024

  

  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 ›

• Accidence Will Happen

  By ljd42 on December 20, 2024

  

  The title is a pun — but it makes sense only if you know what linguists mean by the word “accidence.” Despite that limitation, Accidence Will Happen is very much a book for the general educated reader, not for the… Read More ›

• A close-up view of Neighborhood #2, PowerTown

  By ljd42 on December 18, 2024

  

  Slowly but surely (well, slowly at any rate) we continue our journey through the neighborhoods of Rose City, a.k.a. my model railroad layout. Keep in mind that all of it is a work in progress: I won’t keep waiting until… Read More ›

• The Grey Wolf

  By ljd42 on December 15, 2024

  

  Louise Penny’s 19th Gamache novel, The Grey Wolf, is a gripping mystery that raises as many questions as it provides answers. Clearly that fact bugs a vocal minority of readers — see below — but it’s just fine with me,… Read More ›

• Close to Death

  By ljd42 on December 13, 2024

  

  Close to Death is the fifth Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery by Anthony Horowitz. Yes, you read that correctly: Anthony Horowitz is both the author and the co-protagonist of this series. That’s part of its charm. Of the books in this… Read More ›

• The Lady in the Silver Cloud

  By ljd42 on December 8, 2024

  

  If you want to read a New York–based mystery that’s funny without being frivolous, serious while still being amusing, try The Lady in the Silver Cloud, by David Handler. Although this novel is #13 in a series — the “Stewart… Read More ›

• Prostate cancer awareness

  By ljd42 on December 4, 2024

  

  A parody performed as an important public service by the wonderful Marsh Family, with music of course by Kurt Weill and words by members of the Marsh Family themselves: https://youtu.be/IkVLe_qI2dw?si=PMaz9T5ef6fNi3Hj (sorry about the ad — not my choice)

• Hallelujah (the movie)

  By ljd42 on December 2, 2024

  “If I knew where songs came from, I would go there more often.” So replied the late great Leonard Cohen in an apt twist on the answer to that annoying question everyone asks writers: “Where do you get your ideas?”… Read More ›

• Dinner at Henrietta’s

  By ljd42 on November 28, 2024

  

  Barbara and I just got back from the middle-of-the-day Thanksgiving dinner buffet at Henrietta’s in Cambridge (in the Charles Hotel, if you’re not familiar with it). Henrietta is a pig, by the way. No comment on that, please. This all… Read More ›

• Cloud Cuckoo Land

  By ljd42 on November 24, 2024

  

  Have you been fortunate enough to have studied ancient Greek theater (either in the original or in English translation)? You know which playwrights I mean — Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes. If those are all Greek to you, just keep reading…. Read More ›

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