101 Two-Letter Words

With the Magnetic Fields, Stephin Merritt has written, produced, and recorded ten albums, including 69 Love Songs, which was named one of the 500 best albums of all time by Rolling Stone. Merritt has performed as part of Lincoln Center’s “American Songwriters” series and at BAM’s “Next Wave of Song,” and he has composed the score for the Academy Award–nominated film Pieces of April and for Eban and Charley. Roz Chast has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker since 1978. Her cartoons have been collected in What I Hate, Theories of Everything, and The Party After You Left. She also illustrated The Alphabet from A to Y, with Bonus Letter Z, the best-selling children’s book by Steve Martin. Her most recent book is Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, a memoir about her parents.

"Merritt is a gifted poet." -- Sarah Larson "A fun little book." "Delightfully whimsical." -- David Ulin "Pretty irresistible." -- David Daley "Vaguely Seussian." -- Margaret Eby "Droll...pithy...witty." -- Dan DeLuca "Like some of the best jokes, [Merritt's] humor also educates (stealthily!), and acclaimed cartoonist Roz Chast's drawings of grouchy Scotsmen and vampire dogs complement the wry lessons." -- Tiffany Gibert "When I have no Scrabble move, I really cannot bear it. From aa to za, help has arrived- Why, thank you, Stephin Merritt!" -- Lemony Snicket, best-selling author of A Series of Unfortunate Events "This little book of tiny words by Stephin Merritt is superb; it's funny and it's useful too. (This is the Neil Gaiman blurb.)" -- Neil Gaiman, best-selling author of The Ocean at the End of the Lane "I love this book of Scrabble twos, with art and wit for mi and ye; so now please do the thousand threes, from aah to zzz." -- Stefan Fatsis, best-selling author of Word Freak "Ha!" -- Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed "Oy, ow, my wounded qi! I'll never beat Stephin at Scrabble again. Wo(e) is me." -- Emma Straub, author of The Vacationers