"Many recent picture books," says the New Yorker, "offer inventive variations on the theme of parental subjection."

• If Chambers becomes the champagne of dictionaries, will that save its Edinburgh employees?

• Britain's aggressively cutesy way with official language, seen through an east German lens.

• Another thing that happened while I was on holiday: the New York Review of Books started a blog. Well, if the LRB can do it...

• To Mark Athitakis, the word gatekeeper may be more of a problem than the role: it makes people imagine "a cranky troll minding a very narrow gate".

• Are there two types of reading, asks Mark Thwaite – and if so, what can we call them without sounding prissy?