In 1971, when a new public library opened in Troy, Michigan, famous authors and artists were invited to write letters to the city’s youngest readers, extolling the many benefits of libraries. One of the loveliest was from E.B. White, author of...
John in Omaha, Nebraska, wonders about a phrase that encourages someone to attend an event or risk being left out or feeling uncool: be there or be square. Don’t fall for the fake etymology about people wearing boxes on their heads! Ditto for...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has been reading the novels of author Stephen King’s annoying doppelganger, Stephen Kong, whose titles are like those of King’s, with the exception of one letter. For example, Kong’s first novel recalls the...
The autocomplete function on your phone comes in handy, of course. But is it changing the way we write and how linguists study language? Also, suppose you could invite any two authors, living or dead, to dinner. Who’s on your guest list and...
Author Nick Hornby is an ardent fan of both the novelist Charles Dickens and the musician Prince. In Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius (Bookshop|Amazon), Hornby shows that those two very different men actually had a lot in common...
The poem “Abide” by Ellen Birkett Morris offers elegant advice about slowing down and paying attention. The poem appears in the anthology Running with Water, published by V Press LC and is read with permission of the author. This is part...