What people recommend, in their own words, with the receipt.
by Janet Kagan
1 person
so I’ve paired it with Hellspark, Janet Kagen’s sf book of translation and cultural miscommunication, which several @lingthusiasm listeners told us to read and they were EXTREMELY RIGHT.
McCulloch's 'This is my Jam' post pairing books from her shelves with an advent jam calendar, on allthingslinguistic.com
allthingslinguistic.com ↗·2025-12-26
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The small bar beside a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The bar shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Full and green is recent. It drains, and turns amber and then grey, as the post gets older.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The bar is empty after about:
A striped bar means the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no bar.