Word Snoot Wednesday

I did a lot of book-clearing over the holidays and one of the books I found tucked away was a very old copy of Poplollies and Bellibones, a collection of "lost words" and their meanings by Susan Kelz Sperling.
Poplolly, by the way, is not a backwards way to say "lollipop" but is an old-fashioned term of endearment, like "poppet." If you are, like me, a word snoot who enjoys unusual words, you should check the book out. It's available new for less than $5 and used for a penny and postage.

Happy Inauguration Day! Happy MLK Day!

This terrific image is from Nikkolas and Nicole Smith and pretty much says it all.

Win a Weird Noir Mug

Note: prize is just the mug

Perfect for sipping coffee or tea or hot chocolate as you snuggle in against the winter weather with a good book and a warm dog or cat sitting on your feet to keep you cozy. Enter Weird Noir editor Kate Laity's "Ride the Wild Haggis" contest to win a Weird Noir mug. Details here.
And if you haven't yet picked up your copy of Weird Noir, you might want to do that now. The nights are starting to get longer. You need something to read.

How does anyone learn English as a second language?

It's not just that the language is filled with words that look absolutely the same but are pronounced differently--I read for pleasure; I read the book--or words can mean two different things that are contradictory (inflammable, for example). But I was recently struck by a phrase I've heard all my life and realized it had two seperate meanings and only context to set them apart.
The phrase is, "The die is cast." For me, the meaning is that someone has rolled the dice and made a decision. But I recently went to a printing museum where the docent, as part of the spiel, actually showed the crowd how a particular letter was cast into metal. "The die is cast."
These are the thoughts of a word snoot.

Miles Marshall Lewis on Mixed Couples in Paris

In his "Expat Diaries," Ebony Magazine's arts and culture editor, talks about race and culture in the US and France. Read the article here.

Tales of the Misbegotten Fairy Child

Tales of the Misbegotten: Fairy Child

By Katherine Tomlinson

 Dannon hated the changeling cases.

The Department had been making noises about creating a separate paranormal kidnapping squad to handle them but with the city's financial mess and the department's deep budget cuts, he knew that was never going to happen.

What Dannon hated the most was dealing with the mothers, most of whom had led charmed lives up until the moment the fairies took their babies and left something else behind.

Everyone knew it was the lucky ones who attracted the fairies' attention, the ones whose lives were envied, the ones whose lives seemed special.

Dannon had enough Irish in him to remember his grandmother telling him that a jealous look at a mother and her child was dangerous for them both and must always be followed by a blessing to ward off disaster.

Unless something bad was the intention.

The one good thing about the current string of changeling crimes, Dannon figured, was that it had put the kibosh on the practice of selling pictures of celebrity spawn.

Dannon hated dealing with celebrities almost as much as he hated dealing with vampires and a celebrity changeling case was a high-profile nightmare and the ordinary ones were bad too.

Dannon couldn't remember the number of times his team had been called to a house to deal with distraught parents who thought their baby was safe because they'd put an iron knife of a pair of scissors on top of the crib.

Book Review Wool (part 1) by Hugh Howey

When a free-thinking woman is hired to be the sheriff of a self-sustaining silo world, a revolution is sparked in part one of Hugh Howey's epic novel Wool.

Inside the Silo there is order, and that order is kept by adhering to the PACT and to the ORDER and to a set of rules. One of the worst crimes in the silo is voicing a desire for a better life. When the job of Sheriff becomes vacant, the current deputy does not want it and recommends Juliette Nichols for the job. Juliette, daughter of the man who keeps the silo's nurseries running, is not anxious to leave the mechanical level of the silo where she's worked for years tending to the respirators that recycle the Silo's air, but is eventually convinced to take the position.

Her decision upsets the delicate political balance inside the self-contained structure and leads to consequences no one could expect. Soon Juliette is asking a lot of inconvenient questions about how the Silo came into being and other secrets that the people in power have kept from its inhabitants.

Howey's "arkology" is set some few hundred years in the future. We’re not sure exactly where we are, although at one point, a character sees a map with ATLANTA written on it. There are some nice world-building touches here, including a ritualized funeral that includes throwing vegetables and fruits into the grave to symbolize the circle of life.