Dear Publisher, Excuse the impersonal greeting, but I am sending this along to quite a few of you bow-tied literary types and I really can’t be bothered looking up all your names, can I? As someone already deep into the first draft of a blockbuster tell-all, I think all that research would be rather a…
All posts in December 2021
Lessons from the Haberdashery
Some of the chief pleasures wine affords derive from its effects on the special, hyper-sensitive tissue that lines the inside of our mouths — grasping the lips, tongue and palate in a palpable, sensuous embrace. The food science word for this is mouthfeel, a term I find unbearably awkward and clinical. A better choice is texture,…
When Two Vowels Go Walkin’
the first one does the talkin’. Or so goes the rule we learned as novice readers. It’s why we pronounce ROAD as if it were RODE, and not RAID and why RAID rhymes with TRADE and not . . . well, you get the picture, I think. We need the rule because of the frequency with which vowels…