Our Blog

The National Anthem has been sung and the peanuts and crackerjacks are being tossed about. One of the all-time greats steps up to the plate. Now here comes the pitch: a literary baseball team! Which authors would you pick and at what positions would you play them? You have to keep in mind people’s strengths and place them accordingly, otherwise your team is going to get blown out!

Here’s the starting lineup for your Quirk Books Literary All-Star Team! 

Pitcher: Shakespeare – It makes sense to start Shakespeare at this position, since pitchers think their position is most important. I imagine if Shakespeare was able to look at the history of literature, he would certainly agree. Plus, what a pitch count Shakespeare has! I’m not talking about pitches he may have made, but how many times do you think someone has said “it’s like Hamlet, but with robots,” or “it’s Macbeth, but with puppies.” That’s a high pitch count.

Philly Cheesesteak, Photo by Mikey Il

Philadelphia may be the City of Brotherly Love, but when it comes to its signature sandwiches, the hoagie and cheesesteak, it’s more like a Civil War battleground.

In honor of National Columnist Day on June 23, take a look back at these writers, poets, playwrights, and philosophers who got their start in journalism. Many of these men also sported fantastic facial hair. Coincidence? Yes.

At 22 years old, newly married with abandoned plans to create a Utopia in the Pennsylvania wilderness, English poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) created a journal called The Watchman, published every eight days to avoid the weekly newspaper tax (smart!).

The journal’s first issue was published in March of 1796 and ceased publication by May of the same year (okay, maybe not so smart). Coleridge’s journal contained essays, poems, news stories, reports on Parliamentary debates, and book reviews. Coleridge soon grew to detest his wife Sara Fricker, but at least their marriage lasted longer than The Watchman. The two were separated in 1808.

George Lucas and the Bard of Avon aren't the only two creative forces behind the upcoming William Shakespeare’s Star Wars®—author Ian Doescher had the genius to combine the two. We sat down with Ian to ask age-old questions about inspiration, iambic pentameter, and who shot first.

(Image via flickr)

If there’s any upside to the crazily severe thunder- and wind storms that have been terrorizing large parts of the U.S., it’s the addition of a new word to our collective vocabulary. If you’ve been living under a hailstone, the word is derecho, derived from the Spanish for “straight.” Derechos are, according to Wikipedia, “convection-induced and take on a bow echo (backward “C”) form of squall line, forming in an area of wind divergence in the upper levels of the troposphere, within a region of low-level warm air advection and rich low-level moisture.”

Yikes. You can see why they gave this meteorological mouthful a nickname. Still, weathermen countrywide are probably relishing the rare chance to trot out a term more colorful than “partly cloudy.” And, furthermore, why stop there? We should seize this opportunity to expand our storm-related wordbank. Here are 5 new words to learn, because hey, when it rains, it pours!