Up to my neck in cookbooks: But what makes me drool?  Design guru Caz Hildebrand's marvelous black-and-white pasta cookbook, chock full of etymology, great graphics, and delicious recipes. And lists -- of ingredients, steps, tools, pastas . . .  What do we do, stylistically and grammatically, with lists?

Powder keg on the Mississippi: a noted Twain scholar releases an edition of  Huck Finn in which he's searched and replaced a word 219 times -- probably the most incendiary racial slur in English. Did he just blow up the whole raft?

A pre–New Year pause for reflection brought to mind one of my old favorites and a perennial best-seller, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. To take a tiger by the tail, what do these icons of comics have to say about grammar? One of my favorite things ever.

Grammarspotting: Let's spot some grammar in pop culture and call it by name. Last week it was Stephen Sondheim and his gerunds, this week it's participles in Springsteen. What syntax lurks amid the songs?

Stephen Sondheim's lyrics are delights of the English language. And the title of his lyric collection/memoir delights me as much as a Sunday stroll in the park. A lovely and unusual gerund, for a lovely and unusual talent.