Great websites for writers to waste time (and learn a thing or two)

1. Amazon.com

You may have heard of this website — a good place, I understand, to find books (or anything else manufactured). But what I appreciate even more is the “Search inside this book” link under the image of the book cover on most pages in the Books section.

No longer does one need to own a book or go to a bookstore or a library to thumb through it in search of that name or bon mot or expression you can’t quite remember. Even if you do have access to the book in question, it’s easier to search online (assuming you have a keyword in mind that’s proximal in location or locution to your evasive prey) than to try to remember on what part of what page in what part of the book you remember seeing something last week or last month or years ago.

Then, of course, there are the site’s “Frequently Bought Together” and “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” features—but the book search can be a writer’s salvation.

2. Banned for Life

Newspaper editor Tom Mangan’s site lists reader contributions of clichés and redundancies.