BOOKS

George Orwell: Politics and the English Language

In 1946, George Orwell published an essay in the British literary magazine Horizon, arguing against poor usage of English by modern writers. In the essay, Orwell cited five examples of "the English language as it is now habitually written." The examples

How To Get a Word into the Oxford English Dictionary

The short process is: meet someone who works at the OED evaluating new words for inclusion. The slightly longer process involves plying him or her with drink. The most complete answer is contained in Lyza Danger Gardner's blog entry How I Got a Word in

How to Bind a Book at Home

In this video, actress/musician/writer Catherine Taormina demonstrates how to print and bind a book at home. The first step is to print a series of four-page signatures consisting of standard printer paper folded in half. Next, you sew each signature al

More on Paul Otlet's "Mundaneum"

Paul Otlet's work first caught my attention last May due to a 2003 Boxes and Arrows article. Otlet's work was a sort of conceptual precursor to the World Wide Web, and was in effect an extremely well-organized and mechanized library -- but I'd never hear

A Field Guide to Literary References in 'Monty Python's Flying Circus'

While it's better known for dead parrots and crossdressing lumberjacks, Monty Python has a surprisingly academic background.

Why reCAPTCHA is Good for Humanity

Last week we talked about KittenAuth, a novel CAPTCHA system used to differentiate between humans and spambots -- by using pictures of kittens. Today let's take a look at reCAPTCHA, the system in use by this very blog. What does it do, and why is it goo

How We Work

Yesterday we looked at writers' rooms -- now let's turn to a related topic: how the actual work gets done. Rod McLaren has been posting tidbits on the creative process since 2004, collecting over one hundred fascinating entries in How We Work. It's a t

The Guardian's Writers' Rooms

For some time now, The Guardian has been collecting brief illustrated articles about the rooms where writers work. The collection now stands at fifty writers' rooms, and they make for delightful reading. Three core elements that appear in virtually all

In the Beginning: It's almost almost here!

Reference Books Get ready for some serious volume control as we introduce you to the legends behind the Encyclopedia, the Dictionary, and the Thesaurus. The Encyclopedia "Encyclopedia" is a strange word. It goes back to Greek for "the things of boys/chil

Buy a Friend a Book (Week)

Did you know we're approaching the end of Buy a Friend a Book Week? Well, now you do, and I sure hope that kernel of knowledge somehow guilts you into buying a friend a book! After all, you have an explanation for your book gift during BAFAB Week -- eve

Prison lit

So the weekend is here, Paris is back in jail, and Mercury is about to turn retrograde. It pains me to see pictures of anyone crying, so I'm thinking about mailing Paris a bunch of backordered Don Divas, Darkness at Noon, some Nikki Giovanni, and some Adr

Do You Know These 100 Words?

I recently came across a link to 100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know, by the folks who brought you the American Heritage Dictionaries. The cool part is that they went ahead and printed the 100 words on the web site, leaving you to buy the bo

Towels: the most useful items in the universe

If your coworkers came to work this morning clutching towels, sure, they could just be really excited about the long weekend. But since it's May 25th, it's more likely they're banding with other Douglas Adams fansÂ toÂ commemorateÂ Towel Day. I came to Hi

George Orwell - Why I Write

I recently stumbled across an essay from 1946, by George Orwell. It describes his motives, and the motives he suspects are universal, in writing books. What's most interesting about the essay is his frank admission to the role of the writer's ego in the