Ben Yagoda Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

Ben Yagoda

So in any of the discussions of sentence-starting non-interrogatory "So," did anyone mention that John Bunyan uses it often in "Pilgrim's Progress," eg "So I saw in my dream that the man began to run."?

Ben Yagoda

Unless I’ve missed it, it hasn’t been pointed out that Ring Lardner’s story “Alibi Ike” (1915) was a takeoff on “Alkali Ike,” the name of the Wild West show in this 1909 photo, and of a series of movie westerns starting in 1911. (Not in Jonathan Yardley’s great Lardner bio.) https://t.co/9jUGhU7gdo

Ben Yagoda

@BCDreyer @LauraMLippman @PeterDKramer @goldberg_dan @JamesGleick @kevincarey1 @sorrykb @billruppert @Threneo @kievaliant @seattlebecca @EllenFremedon @thedraz @MattF_FF @jschwartz_james @alicia_furiosa @KathaPollitt @DavidJManson @OpheliaBenson @Neko_Akage @LisaBirnbach @sekramer @borkow1 @KeithNHumphreys @NormOrnstein @CheeseLiz @CallaDain @JanetJlbailey @katekilla @idahogal1006 @arjm5184 @nhmeems @EWFIII @oliverbutler @NYTimesWordplay @RadicalSister15 @wiffleclaw @notinwordlist @MerriamWebster @thegridkid @sv1121 @OED @tinclock @JohnFetterman @Wikipedia @grammarphobia @NYTGames A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters from the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward https://t.co/3CbtRfh3nf

Ben Yagoda

"... The people huddle together and live in such restricted quarters, and in such unsanitary conditions, that the wonder is that they are not carried off by & plague."--Frank Moss, The American Metropolis, 1907

Ben Yagoda

Unless I’ve missed it, it hasn’t been pointed out that Ring Lardner’s story “Alibi Ike” (1915) was a takeoff on “Alkali Ike,” the name of the Wild West show in this 1909 photo, and of a series of movie westerns starting in 1911. (Not in Jonathan Yardley’s great Lardner bio.) https://t.co/9jUGhU7gdo

Ben Yagoda

I have an extra copy of @lynneguist's brilliant "The Prodigal Tongue: The Love-Hate Relationship Between American and British English" I'll mail/post it to the first person who correctly answers: Which NY Times writer has been named most often in https://t.co/CZoCUAcqgp?

Ben Yagoda

@benjaminwittes In Calvin Trillin’s “Tepper Isn’t Going Out,” Tepper asks an aspiring political journalist: "Why is it that reporters covering an election campaign write almost exclusively about who might win, even though we're all going to know that the night of the election anyway?"