A sixth-grade teacher from San Antonio, Texas, says he and his students are reading The Lord of the Rings. They’re curious about the words attercop, which means “spider” (and a relative of the word cobweb) and Tomnoddy, which means “fool.” Grant...
Is it cheating to say you’ve read a book if you only listened to it on tape? Over the centuries, the way we think about reading has changed a lot. There was a time, for example, when reading silently was considered strange. Plus, what do you call...
First-century graffiti. People in ancient times could be just as bawdy and colorful as we are today. To prove it, we found some graffiti written on the walls in the city of Pompeii, and found plenty of sex, arrogance and good old fashioned bathroom...
Martha recalls that as an English major, she nearly memorized William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. He died this month at age 92, and she’ll remember this quote, among others: “Ultimately, the product any writer has to sell is not the subject being...
The books we love as children may influence our careers more than we realize. As a child, Martha was fascinated with stories of cracking codes, and Grant loved books with glossaries–not that far from the kind of work they do today. A caller from...
We got a call from a nurse named Nancy who, what do you know, grew up reading a book called Nurse Nancy. Is there a book you read as a child that influenced your career choices? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Books and Career...