Do YOU Have Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia?
Oh, do NOT make me say that again!
Two of the three books I picked up and finished this weekend had that word in it! Now you know what a phobia is, a fear of or aversion to something. But hippo ... I am not spelling out that word again because it takes up half a line! Anyway, it's the fear of long words. Insert your ironic appreciation here. Anyway, Corinne Pyle's Funky Phobias (ISBN 0439598478) includes other such odd and hard to pronounce fears as arachibutyrophobia which is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth and lutraphobia -- okay, maybe that's not so odd but Mudge from Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger series that I'm rereading would definitely not approve of the fear of otters since he is one! -- and with Daniel Jankowski's illustrations as well as engaging stories with each term to make this book a little more kid-friendly (it's published by Scholastic, so that's important) this is a quick enough read to start and finish. But perhaps I shouldn't have finished it before I went to church yesterday because it did untowardly affect my mood for the day.
And doubtless Charles Harrington Elster will find multiple errors in the above paragraph!
Part style manual -- Elster tries to keep out the pretentiousness, I can tell, and it's cut by about four-fifths -- and part middle finger at everybody's English teachers because what we hear and what we're taught is often based on bad teaching. Essentially What In The Word? (ISBN 0156031973) is presented in question and answer format and contains various word games as well that are amusing when they're not condescending. But don't be too hard on Elster; I will admit the book's a lot of fun. Had my ideas about the plural of "octopus" shot down (it's octopuses, not "octopi") and with support from many major dictionaries -- which the author rightly reflects are mirrors of spelling, pronunciation, and usage and not arbiters -- and style manuals. As a guest columnist on language for the Boston Globe and The New York Times Magazine, Elster seems to work through this book best for me as someone who takes in the best and knows how to make it work for the readers like us!
I could have been a syndicated cartoonist but I didn't want to make peanuts.
Then I come -- or came, since I finished reading this before the other two books I've mentioned -- to Kay Arthur's historical novel Israel My Beloved (ISBN 0736903704). I almost want to put "historical novel" in quotation marks because nearly every major character who isn't a historical figure is allegorical along the lines of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The character representing the nation and people of Israel through nigh twenty-six centuries is a woman named Sarah who's married to God Himself but she's had numerous affairs with other men (re: other nations) and in the years between when Sarah's forced out of Jerusalem -- historically, the late sixth century BC; see the Old Testament books of 2 Kings and Jeremiah for more details -- and is able to return there in our era's 1948 so much happens and happens to Sarah/Israel's people the Jews simply for being Jews. I have to say this is my latest Kafka read, for it definitely wounds and stabs.
Arthur's know for her inductive Bible studies, but this novel gets way limited to the Old Testament.
Now on the subject of my own family (my daughter being named Sarah comes to mind; it's her birthday next Tuesday and she is so counting it down!) at church yesterday Martha had some adventures walking around on her crutches. She's getting better at it -- at least I haven't heard of her falling over on them like I think I would -- but we want her off them as quickly as possible, which may well be in two weeks' time when we get the results of the MRI on her stress-fractured left knee back. So I brought the kids over to my in-laws' house while we're both at work this Presidents' Day (apparently the apostrophe use depends on where in the USA you are) and learned some presidential trivia from our local newspaper that Sharon my mother-in-law thought I'd know a bit of because I read so much!
I knew Theodore Roosevelt was the first President who traveled out of the country, anyway.
And quite a bit more, but we'll share another day,
David
Two of the three books I picked up and finished this weekend had that word in it! Now you know what a phobia is, a fear of or aversion to something. But hippo ... I am not spelling out that word again because it takes up half a line! Anyway, it's the fear of long words. Insert your ironic appreciation here. Anyway, Corinne Pyle's Funky Phobias (ISBN 0439598478) includes other such odd and hard to pronounce fears as arachibutyrophobia which is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth and lutraphobia -- okay, maybe that's not so odd but Mudge from Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger series that I'm rereading would definitely not approve of the fear of otters since he is one! -- and with Daniel Jankowski's illustrations as well as engaging stories with each term to make this book a little more kid-friendly (it's published by Scholastic, so that's important) this is a quick enough read to start and finish. But perhaps I shouldn't have finished it before I went to church yesterday because it did untowardly affect my mood for the day.
And doubtless Charles Harrington Elster will find multiple errors in the above paragraph!
Part style manual -- Elster tries to keep out the pretentiousness, I can tell, and it's cut by about four-fifths -- and part middle finger at everybody's English teachers because what we hear and what we're taught is often based on bad teaching. Essentially What In The Word? (ISBN 0156031973) is presented in question and answer format and contains various word games as well that are amusing when they're not condescending. But don't be too hard on Elster; I will admit the book's a lot of fun. Had my ideas about the plural of "octopus" shot down (it's octopuses, not "octopi") and with support from many major dictionaries -- which the author rightly reflects are mirrors of spelling, pronunciation, and usage and not arbiters -- and style manuals. As a guest columnist on language for the Boston Globe and The New York Times Magazine, Elster seems to work through this book best for me as someone who takes in the best and knows how to make it work for the readers like us!
I could have been a syndicated cartoonist but I didn't want to make peanuts.
Then I come -- or came, since I finished reading this before the other two books I've mentioned -- to Kay Arthur's historical novel Israel My Beloved (ISBN 0736903704). I almost want to put "historical novel" in quotation marks because nearly every major character who isn't a historical figure is allegorical along the lines of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The character representing the nation and people of Israel through nigh twenty-six centuries is a woman named Sarah who's married to God Himself but she's had numerous affairs with other men (re: other nations) and in the years between when Sarah's forced out of Jerusalem -- historically, the late sixth century BC; see the Old Testament books of 2 Kings and Jeremiah for more details -- and is able to return there in our era's 1948 so much happens and happens to Sarah/Israel's people the Jews simply for being Jews. I have to say this is my latest Kafka read, for it definitely wounds and stabs.
Arthur's know for her inductive Bible studies, but this novel gets way limited to the Old Testament.
Now on the subject of my own family (my daughter being named Sarah comes to mind; it's her birthday next Tuesday and she is so counting it down!) at church yesterday Martha had some adventures walking around on her crutches. She's getting better at it -- at least I haven't heard of her falling over on them like I think I would -- but we want her off them as quickly as possible, which may well be in two weeks' time when we get the results of the MRI on her stress-fractured left knee back. So I brought the kids over to my in-laws' house while we're both at work this Presidents' Day (apparently the apostrophe use depends on where in the USA you are) and learned some presidential trivia from our local newspaper that Sharon my mother-in-law thought I'd know a bit of because I read so much!
I knew Theodore Roosevelt was the first President who traveled out of the country, anyway.
And quite a bit more, but we'll share another day,
David
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