“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn the more places you’ll go.” Dr Seuss

I TOOK the Oxford Dictionary of English, The New Oxford American Dictionary, the 2010 update of Roget’s Thesaurus, actress Cybill Shepherd’s autobiography Cybill Disobedience and Howard Jacobson’s award-winning novel The Finkler Question to bed with me last night. I have seen the future, you see, and for me its name is Kindle. My graphite-coloured e-reader is [...]

“He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone, anyway.” — Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye)   

THE life of a headline writer is perilous. I should know – it’s one of the daily duties of my job as a newspaper sub-editor. You have to write to fill whatever limited space you’re given – which often means leaving out the words you’d really like to use – and, of course, you must [...]