Ooh, do we have a great issue for you. It roves widely as our columnists find the humor in bad situations, explore the triangular world of bookmarks, a surprisingly look at Westerns, and at journeys of mythic proportions.
Writers often have a love-hate relationship with their computers. The computer offers ideal editing possibilities but it can also prove sneaky and underhanded when you least expect it. Elizabeth Creith learns, much to her regret, that when a computer climbs into bed and begins to moan, one really should pay attention in Why I Print Things Out.
High adventure of the Viking kind is what thrilled Nicki Leone in her most recent book. A translated and re-issued edition of what she calls “panoramic and almost ballad-like in its language and a “stirring epic of a bygone age” in Long Journeys in Wild Lands.
Bookmarks are so often rectangular in shape that we often forget they come in more unusual, and sometimes even more practical, ones. Laine Farley explores the world of corner bookmarks, those that sit on the edge of a page almost like a non-injurious dog ear, proudly proclaiming their existence in Turning Corners.
What happens when you kind of accidentally get drawn into a genre you never read, and thought you never would, by a book of surprising substance and interest? Katherine Hauswirth moves into the world of Westerns with a new and worthy book that “shows us people in the dusty whirlwind of change and how they travel through it” in When the Going Gets Tough.
Dictionaries are beautiful books. The words, their history and meanings, all merge together to create the foundation of books of every genre. If a dictionary is sufficiently large it can also be used as a literal doorstop—but such a use does have its dangers as Lauren Roberts shares in (Beware) Be Aware of Dictionaries.
