At The Public Medievalist, Jocelyn Wogan-Browne dives deep into the diverse roots of the English language, which “has always been enriched by contact with other languages.”

Welcome to 2020! On his blog Stuck in a Book, Simon Thomas reflects on his favorite books from the past ten years.

Skytalkers is a Star Wars podcast hosted by two diehard fangirls, Charlotte Errity and Caitlin Plesher. They will have lots to talk about this week — with today’s US release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

With the final episode in the Star Wars saga just around the corner, writer Lucy Blue, a lifelong super-fan, reflects on the movies’ darker, more morally ambiguous tone, and the way the series has evolved since her ’70s childhood.

“It’s been said that no species can fully imagine its own extinction. Our inability to imagine ours may ultimately be the source of our undoing.” Kelly Hayes, the writer at Transformative Spaces, reflects on ecological collapse and the future of humanity and our world.

Erynn Brook compiles a thread of tweets, about her encounter with an 18-year-old stranger having a seizure on the subway, into a post on her blog.

From Nadia El-Awady: “I come from a culture that tends to glorify non-elected, autocratic, all-powerful leaders. They have to. The consequences of not doing so are not pretty. So I’ve grown up with a disdain for the glorification of single human beings; even those that don’t have much power.”

“Without 24/7 media, without the internet, a fiction like Dylan McKay could overtake a fact like Luke Perry.” 90210 star Luke Perry’s untimely death reminds us that Dylan McKay was one of the last icons of adolescence.

“What I do when I look at Twitter is less akin to reading a book than to the encounter I have with a recipe’s instructions or the fine print of a receipt: I’m taking in information, not enlightenment.” Mairead Small Staid explores the work of Sven Birkerts and reading in our digital age.

At Tenure, She Wrote, a grad student explains her decision no longer to write narratives of inspiration and gumption: “A little smarts and hard work and luck can’t make my chronically ill body ‘productive.’”

Designer, author, and AltSummit founder Gabrielle Blair created Design Mom in 2006; since then, she’s published thousands of posts on design and parenting, travel, food, and other topics (from the evergreen to the timely).

“Our world focuses on the looks of girls and the accomplishments of boys.” At OTV Magazine, Angela Noel reflects on the gendered compliments adults give children, and how they make it hard for girls to separate their self-worth from their appearance.

Austin Kleon on the need to gain a sense of ownership over our online lives: “Back [in 2013], the worst I felt social media did was waste your time. Now, the worst social media does is cripple democracy and ruin your soul.”

“Can we all agree that there is no such thing as a girl or a boy book?” Teacher and parent Pernille Ripp writes on the toxic effects of defining books by the gender of their supposed audience.

Librarian Deb Baker rejects a recent op-ed calling for Amazon to replace public libraries: “Libraries are often the only egalitarian spaces in American communities, radically welcoming of everyone who comes through their doors.”