Thinking Blogger Cannot Be Ignored

Back in February, my other blog, Boston 1775, got tagged with a Thinking Blogger Award. That designation, originated here, is based on the premise that someone who blogs thoughtfully also blogs thought-provokingly. Not necessarily the case, but a nice thought.

As the original arrangement stipulated, I designated five other blogs for their own Thinking Blogger Awards, explaining my rationale. I aimed for variety, and my designee in the children's-lit world was Monica Edinger's Educating Alice.

I forgot to say, "No backsies!" though, and Monica tagged back here at Oz and Ends. But I was so exhausted by making those five selections that I did nothing in response but thank her. The damage had been done: the "Thinking Blogger" meme had been loosed into the children's-lit-blog world.

No one can hide forever, and in the last couple of weeks Oz and Ends has been deemed "Thinking" by Fuse #8, Mother Reader, Original Content, and Minute Marginalia (which I hadn't even found yet). So once again I'm flattered and grateful, and I really must pick myself up and pass on the honor. I've decided to jump entirely outside the worlds of children's books and publishing, though.

Separated by a Common Language is a linguist's ongoing analysis of how English and Americans use different words, or use the same words differently. I especially admire how she notes parallel terms as she goes along. I don't think she's gotten to my favorite example yet: the verb "to table." In Britain it means to bring a topic up for discussion; in America it means to end that discussion. I've been in a business meeting between American and British executives using the term. That was a lot of fun.

Strange Maps offers glimpses of, well, strange maps. I'm impressed by the variety of offerings, and how this topic takes advantage of the web's capacity to combine graphics and words. For children's-lit content, see the map from Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark (the book on which I wrote my undergraduate thesis).

Heads Up is about news publishing rather than book publishing, so it slips into today's criteria. It combines the attitude that Correct Punctuation Is a Moral Issue, which I can get behind but have trouble convincing other people to adopt, with sharp-eyed analysis of how the news media's little mistakes can add up to real changes in meaning.

Damn Interesting is just that: a collection of weird but still significant stories, mostly from the last hundred years, of the sort that I devoured as a twelve-year-old boy.

Finally, The Year ’Round, Yesterday's Papers, and this growing Flickr archive of illustrations from St. Nicholas offer curious words and pictures from the century before last.