On September 4, 2014, LWON welcomed a new occasional contributor, Bad Science Poet. (Motto: “It’s not the science that’s bad—it’s the poetry!”™) The initial post (below) as well as subsequent contributions survive online. To this day, LWON hasn’t disavowed them. MAYBE, MAYBE NOT Is that uncertainty I see? Its position known to only me? Is […]
Literature
When LWONers aren’t writing LWON posts for your edification and pleasure, some of them are writing books. Excuse our self promotion, but we think our books are pretty good, and as it is the holiday season, we wanted to make sure our dear readers are aware of the latest ones. See below for the books […]
You finish the book, you don’t want it to be over with, there’s still one more printed page, so you read it. “A Note on the Type,” it says, and heads off into the highest weeds: the name of the font in which the book is printed, then the font’s forebears, its continuing history, its […]
Finding a decent bedtime story to read to your kid is harder than you might think. Most childrens books are either pointless (Superman likes red! Superman likes blue!), overproduced (A book with buttons and recorded dinosaur sounds! Wait, who made these recordings?), boring (Pokey the Bear showed Susie she had the strength the whole time!), […]
By now you’ve probably heard about author Naomi Wolf’s fateful radio interview on the BBC. Perhaps you’ve heard the interview itself, though if not, you might want to skip it—especially if you’re a writer who traffics in facts and has ever had to cite one. It’s gruesome listening. Wolf was publicizing her book about the […]
Until last week, I’d never heard of the Broomway. Now I long to walk it. The Broomway is a paradox: a path through the ocean, a six-century-old walkway that disappears each day. It begins on the southeastern coast of England and heads straight out to sea, crossing about three miles of sand and mudflats until […]
I was just sick for two weeks with some dumb respiratory virus, and writing a new post was low on my list of priorities. So please enjoy this old one, which originally ran December 3, 2013. Lately I’ve been reading my way through the series of Oz books. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is only the first […]
I first saw the elves on the floor of my best friend’s station wagon when I was seven. Grinning up from the back of a big book, these elves looked different from any other elves I’d seen. I’d always thought elves were a little wimpy, but instead of being fragile fey, these elves seemed fun. […]