Literary-Minded Blogs

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Grant, people often ask us what language-related or book-related websites we frequent, and so I thought maybe we could talk about a couple of them.

Oh, yeah.

One that I’ve been looking at a lot lately is the Paris Review. It’s that venerable literary magazine.

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah. It’s been around about 60 years, but you’ll be interested in the way I consume it. I started consuming it on a regular basis because of its Facebook feed. It’s very attractive. It’s very visual. It’s got lots of photos of writers, and sometimes it’s got photos of manuscripts that have been all marked up, great manuscripts, or Emily Dickinson’s scribblings on envelopes.

And one of the things I really like that they’re doing lately is they’re recapping Dante’s Inferno. We’re recapping it, just like it’s an episode of a TV show.

Exactly, exactly. Because you know how we sort of come together, millions of us, every Sunday night to watch this or that, you know, Mad Men or Breaking Bad or something like that. And then part of the pleasure, at least for me, is reading the recaps the next day. It kind of extends the pleasure a little bit.

Solidifies the community aspect of it. You’re like, oh, I was there. I saw that and I felt that same thing.

Exactly. Or they point out themes in Mad Men or something that you hadn’t noticed. And it’s just a little treat on Monday mornings.

And so what they’re doing is they figured, well, why couldn’t we just do the same thing with Dante? The real, you know, the Inferno.

I love it.

The great, great poem. And so they said, just think of it as every Sunday night you have your appointment viewing with a TV show. But why not have appointment reading with Dante? And then the next day we’ll recap it.

And it’s actually a lot of fun.

I love that idea.

And the other site that I’ve been going to more and more lately is Book Riot. You know, bookriot.com, it’s got some serious stuff about books, but also some lighthearted stuff.

If I hadn’t looked at Book Riot, then I would not know that I can buy online custom-made Edgar Allan Poe shoes for one thing.

Not toe shoes, Poe shoes.

Poe shoes. You know, got a little Raven, got a little Edgar Allan Poe. It’s a lot of fun, bookriot.com.

Good choices.

Barrett’s review, bookriot.com.

My one choice is Stan Carey’s blog.

Oh, yeah.

Stan Carey is an editor and writer. He calls himself a swivel chair linguist.

Which I love. And he’s an Irishman who writes pretty practically about language as we know it today. He is a modern linguist, which means that he looks at the language with a new light and a new lens and tries to make sense of what we say today rather than what we used to say. He gets a lot of respect from people in the language business because he’s really easy to read and he’s a solid writer. And that’s an important part of it. If I’m going to learn about language from other people, I need it to be something other than academic jargon and I don’t need this dense thicket of words. He also contributes to the Macmillan Dictionary blog, and you can find his website at stancarrey.wordpress.com, or just search for Sentence First, which is the name of his blog.

Do you know where that comes from?

Sentence First? I should, but I don’t.

Lewis Carroll from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Oh, okay. Of course.

The queen says, Sentence First, verdict afterwards. Because remember, they do it backward, right?

Right. Yeah.

She’s guilty, and then here’s what you did.

Yeah, I really enjoy his blog because he covers a lot of topics, sometimes just very, very briefly with a lot of links.

And so it’s a great way to get a roundup of what’s going on in language.

Yeah, and lots of conversation going there, too.

So it’s not just one guy spouting into the void. It’s other people around the world who speak English and who are interested in language putting in their two cents or five dollars, as the case may be.

Well, let us know what you’re reading online about language. You can send us an email to words@waywordradio.org or find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Or you can always call us with your questions and stories about language. That number is 877-929-9673.