Laura Maiklem’s book Mudlark: In Search of London’s Past Along the River Thames (Bookshop| Amazon) is a charming memoir about the rewards of scavenging for bits of history along the River Thames. This is part of a complete episode.
A hundred years ago, suffragists lobbied to win women the right to vote. Linguistically speaking, though, suffrage isn’t about “suffering.” It’s from a Latin word that involves voting. Plus: military cadences often include...
If you’re determined to increase the number of books you read in a year, there are lots of strategies, such as rearranging the location of your bookshelves and thinking of reading the same way you think about trying to get in 10,000 steps...
What’s your relationship with the books in your personal library? Some people feel inspired by the books still have left to read, while others feel guilty seeing them staring down from the shelves. Writer Kevin Mims finds value in yet another...
How would you like to be welcomed to married life by friends and neighbors descending on your home for a noisy celebration, tearing off the labels of all your canned foods and scattering cornflakes in your bed? That tradition has almost died out...
Martha and Grant share tips and tricks for learning unfamiliar words in a book without breaking up the narrative. A handy online resource for quick lookups is OneLook.com, which lets you search several dictionaries at once. This is part of a...