What is Gloss?
Why is it called that and what can you find here?
“A gloss is a brief notation, especially a marginal or interlinear one, of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text or in the reader's language if that is different. A collection of glosses is a glossary.” (Gloss (annotation) Wikipedia)
When I decided to start a Substack, I knew I’d have to do a better job of creating a cohesive theme for the space than I did when I began my Bookstagram. I’m not crazy about my Bookstagram handle and I’ve thought often of changing it, and that can’t happen here. I’ve often changed up the content that I choose to post and the frequency with which I post it. In order for anyone to keep coming back here, they must first have an idea of what they might find when they do, and why they’d want to find it. I really just want to write—but I’d also really like for people to read what I write, and so I have to think about these things.
I started out the way I begin whenever I have to name anything: by googling lists of words. I knew two things about my Substack from the get-go: I would be writing mostly nonfiction essays and book-related posts, and that I wanted my “brand” to reflect something of my love of linguistics. There are so many people online who love books, and though our similarities make this community as fun as it is, they also make us blur together. Plenty of people write book reviews and love literary fiction and modern classics. The overlap of literature and linguistics is a slightly smaller space in which I live, and also happens to be my most enduring love. I love books because I love language. I approach politics through my love of language. I write because I have no better way to express myself than through written language. Every subject I stick my hand into begins to taste of linguistics. I knew that if I were going to start publishing writing, it could only be with a nod to this. I googled a list of linguistics terms.
Gloss was not the first term to catch my eye, but it felt right as soon as it did. A gloss is an explanatory notation, a little bit of exposition in between the lines of a piece of writing. It can be a translation subsumed under lines of the original language text, as it is in linguistics, or it can be a bit of handwriting shoehorned into a paragraph to explain an unknown word or phrase. This immediately clicked. I have some plans for what I intend to write on this page, but the only guarantee I can give is that I will be explaining things that give me pause or won’t get out of my head. I am not an expert academic or a master wordsmith, I am scratching in the margins of masterpieces others have created with my unique thoughts and experiences, to hopefully add to understanding or provide a new way of thinking. I am basically fleshing out the annotations my Instagram followers have gotten used to seeing, in the forms of ramble-y captions and long-winded story rants. This publication is by no means formal. It is my glossary.
So, practically, what will actually be here to read? First and foremost, this space is the child of a book-based Instagram, so most posts will likely be literature related. I have long wanted to write book reviews and I’ve felt an inability to do so effectively on Instagram. Expect to see some things I read reviewed in depth here, and feel free to request a review of anything you want to hear an opinion on! I also intend to write personal updates that relate to reading and writing, on topics such as belonging to a book club, failing numeric reading goals, and politics in the bookish space. This last topic will likely expand to politics in general, in less frequent but further researched pieces on a variety of topics relating to current affairs and cultural phenomena. Expect to see short essays on subjects such as Amazon and the use of Audible/Kindle services, my Arab Jewish relationship to the Holocaust and Jewish identity, and the oddity of somewhat losing a second language, coming later down the line. Lastly, on the opposite end of the spectrum, you’ll see informal, rambling updates on life and reading like those I typically put in my Instagram captions, but actually as long as I’d like them to be.
If any of this interests you, I hope you’ll keep coming back and reading! I’ve been touched by the amount of love and support for my book Instagram over the years. Though it may seem like a small amount of success compared to those with followings in the thousands and millions, I’ve had more strangers enjoy my posts than I ever thought I would, and I hope those same people find something to love here as well. As someone who’s always been really scared to share my interests with others, let alone my feelings and my writing, I feel beyond lucky to have found people who aren’t afraid to be genuine. Vulnerability is scary and I’m inspired every day by the other writers and content creators in this space. Thank you!