Halloween is over, and with it, the sense of mystery and spookiness, but that doesn’t mean we can’t submerge ourselves in a good mystery or crime book! Here are what some of us at PSG have to say about our favorite books and authors when we’re seeking suspense. Nora loves reading mystery novels from classic authors Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as [...]
Just kidding . . . it’s probably not best to make a speech on an empty stomach. But don’t worry, if you’re one of many people with glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, there are some tips and tricks to calm the feeling of nervousness—and, in some cases, nausea—before publicly speaking. This Harper’s Bazaar article gives some great advice to get over the fear. Some [...]
A few weeks ago, I got to meet my favorite author—Patrick Rothfuss. He was doing a book tour to celebrate the release of the tenth anniversary edition of his fantasy novel The Name of the Wind, and made a stop at Brookline Booksmith to do a Q&A session in the store’s basement and a signing upstairs afterwards. I wasn’t able to secure a ticket for [...]
In my recently found passion for pre-Colombian cultures, I went to visit Chichén Itzá, a world famous site of Mayan ruins in Yucatán, Mexico. The site hosts one of the largest surviving stone courts where the Maya once competed in a ball game sport called Pok-A-Tok, derived from the Yucatec Mayan word pokolpok. The court at Chichén Itzá measures 551 feet long and 230 [...]
Imagine randomly hitting the keys on your computer, creating nonsense words as you type. I like to imagine that is how Lorem Ipsum—the filler text that often comes standard with many digital publishing programs—started. However, it actually started with a printer from the 1500s who scrambled up one of Cicero's works, which may be why it’s often mistaken for Latin. To my surprise, though, [...]
Fall is a great time to curl up with a good book, and it’s no surprise that we love to read at PSG! This week we asked our staff about nonfiction. Here are some of our favorite titles: Nora loves In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. The first nonfiction book that she read and loved, Nora says that the story was enveloping and chilling [...]
Most of us have, at some point, felt in sync with a friend or a family member because of a shared experience or shared perspectives. Not only can this “feeling” be measured in oscillation patterns of electrical signals—brain waves— that occur when brain cells communicate with each other, but brain-scanning studies revealed that human brain wave patterns do synchronize in an interactive group [...]
Binge-watching TV shows has become a popular hobby and it had me wondering if the same could be done with books. Not just reading one book after another, but reading books written by the same author. I have been reading a lot of work by Stephen King recently. This is partly due to taking a course about him for school, but also because [...]
Many are disappointed that summer has come to an end. There are no more beach trips or sandals, no more s’mores by the campfire, and school begins once again. But for me, the end of the summer marks the beginning of my favorite season of the year, and it’s not just because of all the pumpkin spice flavors. Where there is fall, there are [...]
Did you know that English is full of little unspoken rules? One of these strange rules happens in ablaut reduplication, which is the repetition of a word with a change in one of its vowels. Terms like criss-cross, Kit-Kat and sing-song are examples of this linguistic phenomenon. But have you ever noticed that there’s a pattern to these phrases? Try saying them backwards: cross-criss, Kat-Kit, song-sing. [...]