I reviewed Joan Didion’s Blue Nights, which is both gorgeous and terrible (terrible in the King James sense of tremendous and fearsome, like when God appears to Moses). In 2003’s Where I Was From, Joan Didion tells of a long wagon journey on which her great-great-grandmother buried a child, gave birth to another, contracted mountain fever twice, and sewed a . . .
“[U]nhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself.” — Jeanette Winterson (Thanks, J.)
My stepdaughter, A., continual bringer of joy, turns eighteen years old today. A few of you have been reading about her since the days of the beautifully and artfully burned pancakes, the puppet Wikipedia, and the giraffe in the wineglass, since The Gashlycrumb Tinies debacle, the Mythic Creatures disappointment, and the Hurricane Charley near-miss. You’ve suggested books for her and . . .
At The Awl, I take a look — a completely unscientific but obsessive look — at some of the ways people are talking about and using slang on Twitter. And, coincidentally, for Sunday’s New York Times, Ben Zimmer considers how linguists, sociologists, and psychologists are mining the medium for clues to real-time language use.