Summer reading recommendations! Martha loves A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader, a beautifully illustrated anthology of letters from well-known writers and others celebrating reading. The book is edited by Maria Popovic of Brainpickings...
Martha shares a poem by Mexican-American poet Sandra Cisneros, “Peaches—Six in a Tin Bowl, Sarajevo.” It’s from My Wicked, Wicked Ways. (The poem is copyright 1987 by Sandra Cisneros. By special arrangement with Third Woman Press...
What do the terms flummox, butterfingers, and the creeps have in common? They were all either invented or popularized by Charles Dickens. The earliest citations we have for many familiar words and phrases are from the work of the popular 19th...
Writer Isabel Allende offers this writing advice: “Show up, show up, show up, and after a while, the Muse shows up, too.” This is part of a complete episode.
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game about Dirkens novels — that is, Dickens novels with one letter in the title changed. For example, what’s the Dirkens novel about a domicile where tired orphans can take some time off work, or a shorter Dirkens...
Cyril Northcote Parkinson’s Law should be familiar to anyone who’s ever been assigned a minor task and a long weekend to get it done— “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” This is part of a...
