Bookmash

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

One of the fun things about having books, besides reading them, is making what’s called a bookmash.

Now, Grant, you know what these are.

These are when you stack the books with their spines facing out so that their titles create a kind of found poetry.

I was reminded of this when I was reading the blog called Sentence First.

You know this one. It’s by Stan Carey, who’s based in Ireland, and blogs about language.

And lately he’s been posting photos of bookmashes, and I enjoy them because they’re often oddly poetic.

I mean, you have to picture this pile of books.

He had a photograph of this on his site.

On the top is a book called Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett.

And underneath that is a book called Bugs by Theodore Roszak.

And then there are four other books.

And if you go down this stack, the titles read sort of like a poem.

It goes, Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, Bugs, Creatures of the Earth,

In the Shadow of Man, Mythmakers and Lawbreakers Defining the World.

Oh, that is nice.

Yeah, and you know that last book.

Found poetry, definitely.

Yeah, Defining the World by Henry Hitchings.

After I looked at Stan’s blog, I happened to glance up at my own bookshelf,

And I turned my head sideways, and I could already see this accidental bookmash taking shape.

And it started with Dave Wilton’s book, Word Myths.

So here’s my accidental bookmash, Grant.

Check it out.

Word myths, grammatically correct.

The language of flowers, getting things done.

Nice.

What does your bookmash look like?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or you can send a picture in email to words@waywordradio.org.