Bits and Bobs

I’ve been reading through the Caustic Cover Critic‘s archives at work (hey, I have that kind of job), and I just noticed this evening that David Drummond, the book designer I mentioned in a post this weekend, actually has a blog, where he looks at some of the approaches he takes to designing covers. His comments aren’t as in-depth as I would like (they tend to be limited to only a sentence or two), but it’s still a pretty cool “inside baseball” kind of thing for those of us, like myself, who geek out over both books and graphic design.

I’ve mentioned this on Twitter, but since I know most of you aren’t following me there, I thought I’d mention it here. A.L. Kennedy on Writing is seriously the best writing column on the Web. I know you aren’t reading it (I know you aren’t, don’t give me that look), but you really should be. Kennedy is a goddamn treasure, and we need to encourage more of this sort of thing.

I read this morning on the Quill and Quire blog that a school board in California is banning the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary because it contains a “sexually graphic” definition of “oral sex”. The stupidity of this boggles the mind; why someone would want to deprive children of a valuable, bog-standard reference text just because it has a couple dirty words in it is beyond me. But then I find it ridiculous that grownups are afraid of words at all. I wonder if Latin’s not on the curriculum so the kids won’t learn what irrumatio means.

August

Writer. Editor. Critic.

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