A one-of-a-kind celebration of the 101 two-letter words allowed in Scrabble. Rolling Stone has called singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields “the Cole Porter of his generation”; O, The Oprah Magazine has hailed cartoonist Roz Chast as “the wryest pen since Dorothy Parker’s.” Together they have crafted a wonderfully witty book that is sure to prove useful to Scrabble players and Words With Friends addicts—and to delight anyone in thrall to the weirder corners of the English language. With the mordant wit and clever wordplay of Edward Gorey or Shel Silverstein, Stephin Merritt has written an original four-line rhyming poem for each of the 101 two-letter words included in The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. Here are poems about familiar words (such as at, go, hi, no, and up) as well as obscure ones (such as aa, ka, oe, qi, xu). And every one of the 101 poems is accompanied by a full-color illustration by the incomparable cartoonist Roz Chast. 101 Two-Letter Words is perfect for any language lover or Scrabble player (it may even improve your score!).

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of Merge Records, founders Mac and Laura offer first-person accounts--with the help of their colleagues and Merge artists--of their work, their lives, and the culture of making music. Hundreds of personal photos of the bands, along with album cover art, concert posters, and other memorabilia are included.

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A fully illustrated oral history of the Magnetic Fields' 1999 triple album, 69 Love Songs - an album that was afforded "classic" status by many almost as soon as it was released. LD Beghtol's book is chatty, incestuous, funny, dark, digressive, sexy, maddening, and delightful in equal measures. It documents a vital and influential scene from the inside, involving ukuleles and tears, citations and footnotes, analogue drum machines, and floods of cognac. Oh, and a crossword puzzle too. The centre of the book is the secret history of these tuneful, acerbic, and sometimes heartbreaking songs of old love, new love, lost love, punk rock love, gay love, straight love, experimental music love, true love, blue love, and the utter lack of love that fill the album - as told by participants, fans, imitators, naysayers, and others. Also included are a lexicon of words culled from the album's lyrics, recording details, performance notes from the full album shows in New York, Boston and London, plus rare and unpublished images, personal memorabilia, and much much more.

Rita may be a baby, but she has the mind (and attitude) of a teenager. She knows she is not a normal toddler but when her parents disappear and a sinister clown and an ice-cream van seem to be hunting her down, even a soft-play centre might not be safe...

Chapter 7. Case Study : Comparing Twitter Archives; Getting the Data and Distribution of Tweets; Word Frequencies; Comparing Word Usage; Changes in Word Use; Favorites and Retweets; Summary; Chapter 8. Case Study : Mining NASA Metadata; How Data Is Organized at NASA; Wrangling and Tidying the Data; Some Initial Simple Exploration; Word Co-ocurrences and Correlations; Networks of Description and Title Words; Networks of Keywords; Calculating tf-idf for the Description Fields; What Is tf-idf for the Description Field Words?; Connecting Description Fields to Keywords; Topic Modeling.

The Paris Review asks: who hasn't survived a tax audit, a snowstorm, a break-up, or presided over a murder? The next addictively clever Paris Review anthology is not a self-help manual; rather it is a wicked elaboration on the human effort to overcome--and instigate--trouble. Throughout these pages you will find men plagued with guilt, women burdened by history, scientists bound by passion, mothers fogged with delusion, and lovers vexed with jealousy. In the theme that encompasses every life, no protagonist--or reader --is exempt. Among those to appear: - Annie Proulx - Andre Dubus - Norman Rush - Charles Baxter - Wells Tower - Julie Orringer - Elizabeth Gilbert - Ben Okri - Rick Bass