Which Word Would You Banish?

Congratulations. You have just been named King (or Queen) of the English Language. It’s not all glitz and glamour, but the job does have an interesting perk: you get to choose the one word you will banish from the language … Continue reading →

S.D. Livingston - Books, blog, and literary oddments

Florida Town Unnerved by Sinkhole

Another one for the Kings of Providence file. Fortunately, no one was injured when this enormous sinkhole opened up in a Florida family’s back yard. It’s already 50 feet deep—and still growing!

S.D. Livingston - Books, blog, and literary oddments

Is Handwriting a Skill That’s Needed Anymore?

If you’ve ever read a Western, you’ve probably encountered the passage where X marks the spot: the scene where an uneducated character makes his “mark” on a contract (and usually needs someone to point out where to do it). For … Continue reading →

S.D. Livingston - Books, blog, and literary oddments

Literary Database

Databases aren’t the most poetic things. Their discrete pieces of information, often broken down to minimal parts, are a bit like the individual letters of the alphabet: building blocks waiting to be shaped into useful forms. Now, an entrepreneur is … Continue reading →

S.D. Livingston - Books, blog, and literary oddments

Text-Speak: Glistering Prose

LOL. ROFL. YMMV. If these initialisms have you scurrying for the comfort of your Strunk and White, you’re not alone. It’s popular these days to bemoan the falling standards of written language. Literacy, punctuation, and grammar have slipped into the … Continue reading →

S.D. Livingston - Books, blog, and literary oddments

Open-Source Textbooks

Free textbooks! Can you imagine the excitement a sign like that would cause on campus? It might seem like the stuff of fiction, but free textbooks are the latest entry on the open-source landscape—and they’re set to give the traditional … Continue reading →

S.D. Livingston - Books, blog, and literary oddments

Guidestones

A mysterious monument. Whispers of a conspiracy. Grisly murders and a search for clues. It’s the stuff of darkened theatres, the type of thing we love to sit back and enjoy. But what if you could join the search—and never … Continue reading →

S.D. Livingston - Books, blog, and literary oddments

Book Sculpture

When is it okay to destroy a book? Not destroy, perhaps, but alter. To remove its cover, or mark its pages, or even tear some out. For some people, even jotting a note in the margin is literary sacrilege. But … Continue reading →

S.D. Livingston - Books, blog, and literary oddments

The Little Free Library

If you walk past a certain house in Hudson, Wisconsin, you might stop to glance at the odd wooden mailbox on the front lawn. Look closer, though, and you’ll see that it isn’t a mailbox at all. It’s a library: … Continue reading →

S.D. Livingston - Books, blog, and literary oddments

Literary Tourism: Through the Looking Glass

When you step into your favourite literary world, where do you go? Maybe it’s to a shire full of hobbits and wizards, or to the ominous shores of Shutter Island. But if you like to be carried away by flights of … Continue reading →

S.D. Livingston - Books, blog, and literary oddments