Mindless diversions when you need a break
It’s funny how blogging is the first casualty when I’m up to my eyeballs in work. In the meantime, here are a few of the many mindless diversions on the web: “Insanely interesting facts” from the Mental Floss “amazing fact...
Your name in a book means you’ve been ’tuckerized’ (it’s a good thing)
Astrologers who find new stars get their discoveries named after them; so do researchers identifying new diseases. Did you know that there is at least one writer who has been similarly recognized, although for a practice rather than a discovery? I had never heard the...Blog Action Day +1
Yesterday was Blog Action Day, where more than 9,000 bloggers had signed up to “raise awareness, initiate action and shake the web” by discussing poverty. High housing costs often mean a decision between paying the rent and eating properly. In my...Gee, thanks, Stevie
I’m mad at Stephen Harper. Yes, Canada’s newly re-elected Prime Minister is still in the saddle after a useless election that he called, thinking he could turn a minority government into a majority. Although he did gain 16 more seats, he was 12 shy of the...
Start your glory file to stop imposter syndrome
Here’s a secret about a lot of writers, or maybe just humans. We have fragile egos. We crave positive feedback, and when we don’t get much (or any), we’re often struck by a feeling of “I’m not as good as [fill in name of admired author...
More prize-winning odd titles in an odd contest
This spring, I posted about the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year. I recently found out that The Bookseller has crowned the Diagram of Diagrams, bestowing the title of Oddest Book Title among all the winners of the past 30 years. You may be surprised to...The holy grail of having it all
An appealing recent entry from WordSpy (a web site devoted to “lexpionage,” the sleuthing of new words and phrases) is “stay-at-work mom.” The term refers to a mother who returns to work soon after giving birth. I think it equally applies to...I [heart] my local library
The library in my town has been there for me for many years. When my children were small, we joined the reading program every summer, and we were frequent borrowers of books and occasionally toys throughout the year. It’s the first place I turn when I hear of a...