I’d have to agree with the other old fussbudgets about this issue.  Standardized spelling can be a pain sometimes, especially in our language, where we are taught to sound things out phonetically and there are thousands of exceptions to the rule.  But it has massive advantages in our ability to understand each other.  Heck, that’s whey speeling was standardized in the first place: because the way Chaucer spelled and the way Milto spelled could be very different and required some serious... Read Full Story

The NY Times has a neat slideshow about a mural now in NYU’s Language and Literature buiding that depicts the workplaces of some famous authors.  One’s workplace is ever so important and it must have been neat to be able to go and research the houses that it all happened in.  I remember quoting lines from Pride and Prejudice in Chawton House, where Jane Austen did most of her writing.  I was just thinking, “I’m here, where Jane Austen stood and ate and laughed and cried and did work.  How... Read Full Story

Amazon just announced that a collector’s edition of the Tales of the Beetle Bard will be on sale this December with a reproduction of JK Rowling’s handwriting. All proceeds will go to the children’s charity:The Children’s High Level Group (CHLG), founded by Rowling herself. This is exciting news, Harry Potter fans. Besides the release of the new film installment. Hey, do you think she reads my blog? Amazon is thrilled to be the exclusive seller of Collector’s Edition of The Tales... Read Full Story

There are some things that one takes for granted.  For instance, I suppose that if I wake up tomorrow, the sun will have risen.  And I assume that if I am breathing, there is still air.  But when do you count yourself as reading?  Is it only when you open a book or read an article?  There is another debate going on in the world of academia about whether or not teens spending time online and not reading books are actually becoming less literate or are simply getting their read-on in a... Read Full Story

I don’t like textpeak. There, I said it. I want to go back to writing letters…. because receiving something other than garbage or bills in the mail can make your whole day. But there is a linguistics expert, one David Crystal, who is looking to texting, not as something to be feared and shunned, but as “as a force for, and signifier of, linguistic ability” and a way for young people to have private communications. I wouldn’t know if I’d buy that, but perhaps one day I’ll read the book... Read Full Story

between YA and adult. For all you writers out there, here’s a NY Times article about the discrepancies between what a writer thinks she is writing and what publishing decides to sell it as. It is sometimes disconcerting and often sad when a writers vision clashes with the bottom line. But not always, as Margo Rabb can tell you. However, YA fiction gets no respect in the literary elite… But if your book touches someone, youth or adult, perhaps that doesn’t matter, either. I’m Y.A., and... Read Full Story

Been a heck of a week.  A robust storm fried our internet and phone and everything else.  But I’m back again (”said Nora, with a monumental crash.”)  But let’s get back to business.  Here’s a London Times article bewailing the low interest in reading.  It gets to that topic through the vein of an ebook reader.  I have to say that I agree with Mr. Hornby, I wouldn’t read an ebook, either.  I think that when you love ooks, you not only love what is inside them, you love the way they look, the... Read Full Story

Terrific NY Times picture for a quiz on the translational screw-ups that happen when works of literature are translated from one language to another.  I would post the quiz, but firstly, I don’t know the answers, and secondly I find the picture posted with the quiz much more entertaining.  Can you unscramble the titles? Read Full Story

The NY Times has produced a slideshow of their collection of “literary ephemera,” which are items sent in usually in promotion attempts.  There are even die-hard collectors of this stuff who believe that “ephemera documents history, recording the small, and often subsequently lost, details of events, cultures and lives.”  Well, whether that’s true or not, it must be weird and sometimes cool to open a package with a fun little surprise inside.  I’d love that job.  Take a look at the... Read Full Story

Here’s a great article about books that we are told are classics “but all they ignite in us is anger.”  It’s lovely to realize that just because some old people tell you that a book is a classic doesn’t mean that you have to like it, or even respect it.  It’s olay to think that some “classics” are garbage.  Here’s the London Times’ Rod Liddle’s Red-Mist List. Burning is too good for them For many years, in my youth, I refused to read Anthony Powell, simply on account of the way he... Read Full Story