This Week in Words – Jun 29

by Treehouse Editors

compiled by Rachel Bondurant

If you want to be more creative and open-minded, you’ve come to the right place. A Canadian study has shown that reading short stories increases a person’s comfort level with curiosity and ambiguity, which in turn increases the potential for creativity and “sophisticated thinking.”

In the Huffington Post, David Crystal talks about the ever-evolving phenomenon of spelling within the English language.

Laura Bogart speaks in brutal and honest terms about rage in this past week’s Sunday Rumpus Essay.

The Los Angeles Review of Books just published the third installment in an entertaining and enlightening series of essays about fairy tales and their various retellings, both ancient and contemporary. This one is a roundtable of pieces on versions of The Little Mermaid. But you can also check out the first and second installments about Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, respectively.

Reading recommendation: If you haven’t already, do yourself a favor and give Ardor a read. It’s free and online, and they have a beautiful format for their issues. (I recommend the fiction in Issue Two, to start.)