400 Books (not really)

Today I finished the 400th book since I began tracking my reading back in 2016. Of course, I generally do not count towards my ‘Books Read’ total those volumes belonging to the Comics & Graphic Novels category, so in my self-approved count, this book is #351. The slim staple-bound almost-a-pamphlet in question is Life on a Coral Reef, by Russ Kinne. It is part of a “Nature Program” series put out in the 1950s by the National Audobon Society, and included in each of the series a set of color stamps with photos accompanying the text, gummed on the back so that the reader could paste them into the book. In this case the stamps had not been pasted in, perhaps because the pictures just weren’t that good. I append below one of the pages of these stamps, so that you can compare with modern underwater photography and see the immense improvements since 1956, when Book #351 (or #400, but we’re not counting that way) was published.

Book List: 4th Century, 2nd Quarter

Continuing my ongoing listing of books most recently read, and continuing the practice just lately begun of presenting such listing in convenient (to me) twenty-five (25) book chunks, for reasons touched upon in the first such set (viewable here), I herewith present the most recent twenty-five (25) books read, #326 – #350 in my count since I began keeping track in 2015. (As usual, I do not include comics and graphic novel books in my count, though they are listed below.)

Book read #326 was and is the first ‘e-book’ I have read, the progenitor of all Scandinavian crime fiction, The Iron Chariot by Stein Riverton. Stein Riverton was the nom de plume of the Norwegian Sven Elvestad, who began his writing career like O. Henry after a small touch of embezzlement. The novel itself is a pleasantly troubling work, not entirely plausible but a nice enough deceitful first-person narration of a puzzling crime. I read this in digital format because I could not find it in physical format, and had read several paeans to this author—for whom the Norwegian crime fiction award is named—so that when I was given a Kindle credit I used it to check out the beginnings of the current Scandinavian mystery boom. The author seems to be ripe for any biographer who understands Norsk, with a strange and secretive life of alcohol abuse and hints of sexual and other mysteries that might repay the researcher who can read the traces left in the palimpsests Elvestad left behind.

Also read at the beginning of this tranche of books was The Case Of The Journeying Boy, a fantastic thriller from Michael Innes. Though passing time has made much of the narration a historical period piece (it was originally published in 1949), Innes wrote a truly brilliant book. Its overdose of erudition frames the story of the protagonist, who is not the titular ‘boy’ but his would-be tutor, troubled by his charge and the bizarre situations the boy manipulates. A few Children’s books show up in this slice, due to new access to some old books of mine, as well as a noted novel I wrote a note on here.

# Read Author Title Genre
326 6/22/19 Stein Riverton The Iron Chariot Mystery
327 7/1/19 Thomas Malory; Sidney Lanier, ed. King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table Children’s
328 7/2/19 Barbara K. Walker & Maki Tezel The Mouse and the Elephant Children’s
329 7/9/19 Michael Innes The Case of the Journeying Boy Mystery
330 7/15/19 Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre Fiction

 

I finally read The Wizard of Oz, which I knew many literary lights and others have cited as their favorite kid’s book. After seeing the interesting display about Oz at the San Diego Country Fair, I jumped once more into the breech and found a very different story than that in the MGM film. The Dorothy of L. Frank Baum is a much more self-confident, much more wholly American, and a much younger (obviously) girl than the heroine portrayed by Judy Garland. Though the Land of Oz gives her many surprises, she meets them all with pluck and intelligence. I look forward to reading more of Baum’s works, to see how well his intention to create truly American fairy tales succeeded. Also of note is John Varley’s The Persistence of Vision, a short story collection made creepy by the passing of time and the Age of Groupies, but of interest nonetheless. The less said about Amanda Cross the better.

# Read Author Title Genre
331 7/22/19 L. Frank Baum The Annotated Wizard of Oz Children’s
332 7/25/19 Amanda Cross Death in a Tenured Position Mystery
333 7/28/19 Amanda Cross In the Last Analysis Mystery
334 7/30/19 Amanda Cross Poetic Justice Mystery
335 7/31/19 John Varley Persistence of Vision SF/Fantasy

 

The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy is a much tighter and therefore much better book than L.A. Confidential. The gritty (think of the gravel in your scraped knee as a kid) portrayal of the Los Angeles police department during the postwar ’40s makes compelling reading, though the mystery is ultimately less about the Black Dahlia murder and more about Ellroy, as usual. The Herbert Gans text on Popular Culture and High Culture is, of course, a classic sociological text, though the most interesting thing I found in this original edition is the observation that attacks upon ‘low’ culture by the intellectual elite correspond to the erosion of power held by that elite in the society as a whole. The Dragon magazine was read as an exercise in nostalgia, pure and simple.

# Read Author Title Genre
336 8/4/19 Anne Brontë Agnes Grey Fiction
337 8/9/19 Bruce H. Wilkinson The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life Religion & Spirituality
8/12/19 Doug Miers Trade Paperback #1 Comics & Graphic Novels
338 8/12/19 Kim Mohan, ed. Dragon Magazine No. 102 D&D
339 8/14/19 Herbert J. Gans Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste Sociology
8/15/19 Buddha Comics & Graphic Novels
340 8/20/19 James Ellroy The Black Dahlia Mystery

 

Finally read Stephen Mitchell’s version of Gilgamesh, a Christmas present from my brother at least a half decade ago. (So don’t be surprised if I don’t immediately read a book you give me or recommend; I’ll get around to it eventually as the planets align.) Mitchell does a good job forming a coherent and compelling narrative out of the often fractured material, but I still feel that I just don’t ‘grok’ the Gilgamesh tale, that it just cannot move me in the same way the tales of crafty Odysseus do. I also read Michael Crichton’s Airframe, a good read recommended by one of the two—or is it three now?—reader’s of this blog’s Friday Vocabulary feature.

# Read Author Title Genre
341 8/24/19 Keith Laumer Zone Yellow SF/Fantasy
342 8/28/19 Stephen Mitchell Gilgamesh: A New English Version Mythology & Folklore
343 8/29/19 Neil Gaiman Smoke and Mirrors SF/Fantasy
344 8/30/19 Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth Critical Mass SF/Fantasy
345 8/31/19 Michael Crichton Airframe Mystery

 

Science Fiction also predominates the last portion of these last twenty-five books, and I am likely to focus more on this genre, if only to make some room for books bought but not yet shelved. The absolute highlight of these last five books is the slim Strange Invasions by Michael Kandel, whom you may know as the translator of some of Stanislaw Lem’s books. The novel is a stunner, exploring the boundaries between sane and unsane, both within the mind of the troubled narrator as well as in society as a whole. I already wrote about William Gibson’s Burning Chrome and am happy to report that Neuromancer is a much better book.

Bulmer’s Land Beyond the Map is workmanlike but with interesting ideas, while its tête-bêche partner, Edmund Hamilton’s Fugitive of the Stars is silly but engaging. But Fat Freddy’s Cat beats both storytellers in his recounting of the War of the Cockroaches.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
346 9/2/19 Michael Kandel Strange Invasion SF/Fantasy
9/2/19 Gilbert Shelton The Adventures of Fat Freddy’s Cat Book 6 Comics & Graphic Novels
9/2/19 Al Moore 1963 – Book Six: Tomorrow Syndicate Comics & Graphic Novels
347 9/6/19 Norman Fischer Sailing Home: Using Homer’s Odyssey to Navigate Life’s Perils and Pitfalls Religion & Spirituality
348 9/8/19 William Gibson Burning Chrome SF/Fantasy
349 9/10/19 Kenneth Bulmer / Edmond Hamilton Land Beyond The Map / Fugitive Of The Stars [Ace Double M-111] SF/Fantasy
350 9/15/19 William Gibson Neuromancer SF/Fantasy

 

I mentioned the current focus on Science Fiction, and I am also trying to slog through some books I’ve turned up which look like I won’t want to keep them (such as the boring Buddhist book vaguely referencing the Odyssey). The pile next to my bed is a trifle lower, and I have several choices which do not look that good at all in my office. Until next time….

The lists of previously read books may be found by following the links:

Normative Social Theories

“Normative social theories, which are the only relevant answers to problems of value in the social sciences and the humanities, differ radically from this. No normative theory, neither Anglo-American democracy nor Russian communism, neither the Christian ideal nor the Mohammedan ideal for life, could ever hope, nor does it ever pretend, to be completely in accord with what is in fact the case in any specific empirical society. Yet no one takes it as proof of the inadequacy of democracy that there is no actual society anywhere in which the democratic ideal is perfectly realized. One does not take it as an argument against the Christian ideal for life that there are no perfect Christians. Yet, if normative social theories were handled by the same methods as those used for factual social theories, this is precisely what we should conclude when we find our normative social theories to be out of accord with specific facts in any actual society.

“But the whole point of a normative social theory is that it is introduced to change the de facto situation at least in part, rather than to conform to it. It defines the ideal society at which we are aiming. It does not purport to designate, after the manner of a theory in natural science, the de facto state of affairs which we actually have. It is, in short, an answer to a quite different problem and question than the type of problem or question we are trying to answer when we ask for a factual social theory.”

— F.S.C. Northrop

Friday Vocabulary

1. indefeasible — not liable to be annulled or voided, not forfeitable

Any arguments for the indefeasible rights of an author to control his writings are undercut by the works of Franz Kafka, most of which were saved only when his friend Max Brod famously ignored Kafka’s final wishes that his unpublished works be burned after his death.

 

2. carter — driver of a cart

The shoats quickly fled the overturned wagon, but the dazed carter merely sat mournfully on the kerb, bemoaning his loss rather than seeking to retrieve the runaway pigs.

 

3. groin — to fashion intersecting vaults or to furnish such vaults with ribs along such an intersection

The builders had replaced the barrel vaults of the original plans, groining the vaults instead for greater strength and stability.

 

4. apophallation — the biting off of the penis

Two types of slugs have been observed to engage in apophallation during or after mating, though the reasons for this behavior are not entirely clear.

 

5. enchafe — to make warm or hot

We must beware the effects of excessive drink, for, as Plutarch says, wine has the power to enchafe both the body and the mind.

 

6. tippet — narrow scarf worn with ends hanging down over shoulders; band of silk worn by clergy around neck with ends pendent from shoulders; woman’s shawl or scarf worn around neck and shoulders

In the 19th Century the proctors at the University of Cambridge wore the tippet in place of the hood worn by other officials.

 

7. clinker — fused matter left behind from burning combustible material in furnace or forge, piece of slag

Natural cement is composed from the finely ground clinker formed after burning the appropriate limestone.

 

8. eupeptic — having good digestion; of or related to a good digestion

I envied him his youthful strength, his happy mien, his eupeptic state that seemed so to contrast with my own crabbed, pain-wracked, and sour disposition.

 

9. mantic — of or related to divination

The priestess lay dazed upon the bed of animal hides, her mantic frenzy now evaporated leaving only the memory of her words of doom.

 

10. cumbrous — unwieldy, cumbersome

For ages readers have bemoaned the cumbrous volumes they were forced to read from, but only our day has seen these troublesome tomes replaced with virtual books that can be carried in the pocket.

Monday Book Report – Burning Chrome

The most noticeable thing about William Gibson’s future as seen in his 1986 short story collection Burning Chrome is just how relentlessly shiny it is. Just like the classics of 1930s Science Fiction he pretends to disdain, even the dark underbelly of his future is full of “Gee, whiz!” artifacts that take the observer’s breath away. Or did once, at least. The breathless observers of ’30s SF have no more breath to take.

And we who were once oh-so-bright-eyed youngsters all agog at the future Gibson crafted for us, we can now regard the shiny future he made and look askance, embarrassed by those long-ago reveries on the world to come, embarrassed by those visions we now see in their naiveté as just as puerile, just as cringeworthy as the stories of E.E. “Doc” Smith or Capt. S.P. Meek.

For these stories, the progenitors of the ‘cyberpunk’ subgenre, have not aged well, not well at all. The shining “Gee, whiz!” chrome is a bug, not a feature. At times Gibson is too poetic for his own good, groping towards a gritty, hard-boiled, voice of the streets diction that is undercut by the marvels of the world-soon-to-come. He is beguiled by the cyber, but it is difficult to write shiny noir. Of course, that luminous quality to everything he sees could just be the drubs. There are a lot of drugs.

Funnily enough, Gibson detested the very sins I here accuse him of, as in “The Gernsback Continuum”, included in Burning Chrome (and anthologized as well in the seminal collection Mirrorshades). A photographer is plagued by visions of the impossibly bright populist future as promoted by the science fiction pulps of an earlier age. Gibson shows his strong poetic talent here in the quite sage words of the protagonist’s friend Kihn, who advises him that the best cure for his backwards looking futuristic hallucinations is to watch TV and porn, because “Really bad media can exorcise your semiotic ghosts.” This is true insight.* But Gibson’s diss of utopia is often undercut by his own wide-eyed wonder at the technological “pocket full of mumbles” that the miracles of computers and biotechnology will bring. And again, there’s also the drugs.

Like an aging Gen Xer who never recovered from his heavy bets on Pets.com and its sock puppet, William Gibson focused on the unimportant things and just plain guessed wrong. Though these failings are almost essential to science fiction, Gibson’s future has fusted faster than need be, and at times these early stories make difficult rereading over thirty years later as the discordant notes overpower the main themes. Writing about the near future is hard. John Varley also wrote about a future when elective body modification becomes commonplace, but his stores hold up much better than Gibson’s to some extent because they are set at a greater remove in time (and space), though social mores have changed so that much of Varley’s oeuvre now seems simply creepy.

But Gibson was merely repeating what all the trendy world wanted to believe of the coming tech revolution; no one foresaw the boring, deadening reality to come. Break out the old issues of Mondo 2000† and read of the coming “smart drugs” that will release the other 90% of our brains, and all the rest. But the bad guesses in Burning Chrome pile up quickly. Among the dominance of the Japanese zaibatsu, transdermal interfaces for microcomputers, the trade in black market RAM and endocrines, the replacement of eyes with manufactured lenses and orbs, among all these his lyrical if not maudlin stories of love tormented or denied at times get lost.

Of course, it is too easy to second guess these choices now, looking back from the ruins of the future we actually got, as opposed to the ruins we were promised. But his vision is often fascinated by the packaging and not the product. It is as if the current Stonertopia were described back in the 1970s, and reams of prose were devoted to the amazing rolling papers used by the dopesmoking elite, handcrafted from rare Southeast Asian woods, etc., yet missing the fact that modern weed would incapacitate most riders on Kesey’s bus for longer than it would have taken them to arrange bail on felony drug charges. I mean, I love both versions of “Johnny Mnemonic”, and the prose holds up better than the movie for me, but—sheesh! Why in the world smuggle data around in living human brains?!? Sure, I get it, when you are feeding fourteen floppy disks one after another into your 512K Macintosh to install some new software it may occur to you that the human brain has a lot of storage. However, if you can conceive of replacement eyeballs that also record video you can think of miniaturizing data storage as well. And what possible purpose could be served, in the short story from which this collection gets its name, could be served by placing a “plug-in military program” into a physical container that “looked like the magazine of a small assault rifle”? The software in question supposedly excels in breaking into secure computer systems, but if a device has no basic I/O, just how will it be ported into the target system? I began to believe that Gibson was ignorant of the ‘soft’ part of software. He writes of cracking this program as a eight-hour job, three hours of which are spent just opening the magazine-like case (with lasers, no less!). These and other groaners made me doubt that Neuromancer could have held together as well as I remembered.‡

Perhaps the issues I see were merely the early experiments of a budding novelist, for that seems to be Gibson’s forte. Looking at Burning Chrome more like Pynchon’s Slow Learner palliates the most egregious faults. Or perhaps Gibson is at his best as a collaborator, as in two of the three stories in this collection he co-wrote with others. (Hey, my favorite SF author whose initials are not PKD is C.M. Kornbluth, and more than half his output was as part of a writing duo.) Perhaps Canada must take the blame, as it so often does. Or perhaps it’s the drugs. Yes. Probably the drugs.

* Unfortunately, in the After Age we live in, the advice is untenable, as our nightmares are bad media made even worse reality.

† Unfortunately, I don’t have issue #11.

‡ I started rereading Neuromancer right after I finished Burning Chrome; so far, it’s as good as I recalled.

Friday Vocabulary

1. panentheism — belief that God and the universe interpenetrate and influence each other

In contradistinction to the identity of God with the universe described by pantheism, panentheism affirms a deity which exists within the universe but is not identical with it, yet which is not entirely separate from that universe as is the case with traditional theistic belief.

 

2. nictitate — to wink or blink

Though most may think that the liar nictitates more frequently than the normal person, the subtler truth is that the liar blinks less often while telling the lie, and then achieves a faster than natural rate while speaking of trivial matters.

 

3. sloper — basic tailoring pattern without allowance for different seams or styles, usually made for a specific individual

If you have your own slopers for basic garments, you can quickly determine where you’ll need to make allowances by comparing it with a standard pattern.

 

4. mete — to apportion, to allot

If we had the eye of God could be mete condign punishment to every sinner?

 

5. appoggiatura — grace-note prepended to essential tone of a melody

She shows off her range with an incessant barrage of runs and trills until one cannot begin to guess which note is appoggiatura and which the melody.

 

6. anamnesis — remembrance of things past

Nostalgia is always one danger of anamnesis; regret is another.

 

7. rhinorrhea — runny nose

With a runny nose you get a snot rag, whereas with rhinorrhea you get a mucus abatement device.

 

8. parous — having given birth

The primary difference seen in the parous women in the study was a marked willingness to more readily take the drugs offered for pain.


 

9. extravasate — to force out or to flow out from usual vessel or channel

His legs were blotched with blood extravasated into the muscles due to his severe scurvy.

 

10. vertu (more commonly virtu) — taste for works of art or curios; objets d’art, curios

Mesoamerican vertu lay scattered about his office with an artful nonchalance, as if that Mayan duct flute had just happened to be placed athwart the Aztec censer after the player finished his tune.

Friday Lexicon

Today, after a full year of Friday Vocabulary posts, I am pleased to announce the launch of my Lexicon page, comprising every word I have used in my weekly Vocabulary, along with its definition. (Or at least one definition; several words utilize a meaning other than the most common. Caveat lector!) In addition to showing every word used, the Lexicon page is searchable, with a search box below the displayed words (by default 50 words are shown, so you may have to scroll down a trifle). Just select “Word Entry” from the dropdown (an ungainly denotation, which I may change if anyone actually cares), enter your search term, and Voilà!

The search function matches on parts, so, for example, you can quickly find all the ‘super’ words I’ve shared.

Or you can look at the ‘ology’ words, if you’re so inclined.

My personal favorite is this search on the string ‘ence’, which returns some of my most favorite words, including one from the very first Friday Vocabulary post, over eight years ago.

You can also search by definition, among other things. Go ahead, give it a try!

 

Now I have not been promulging Vocabulary lists every week for the last eight years. In fact, I have only been consistently doing so for the past fifty-two weeks after stopping some four months into the original experiment in 2011 (save for one exceptional post in 2016). Still, a number of words have passed under the WordPress, and now all those words are assembled for your perusal and study. In fact, over seven hundred words have been defined so far — 702, to be precise. The Lexicon listing, however, currently shows 707 entries, as I have broken out some definitions (such as for ‘supercillium’ in the first image above) when a word’s meaning was sufficiently distinct, or when a given definition spanned two parts of speech.

For the most part, these words are those I stumble over in my reading. I usually use an app to quickly look them up — though the app not infrequently lacks either the word or the meaning I look for — and then eventually add them to my Vocabulary for some week in the future. Some words remain in my prospects list for a long, long time, either because I have difficulty defining them or because I am flummoxed as to what sentence I might construct for them to inhabit. At times I find a prospect when looking up another word (I use a physical dictionary—at least one!—as well as the app when preparing my vocabulary). And occasionally one of my (three!) readers will suggest a word, for which I am ever so grateful.

When preparing the weekly listing, I look at the candidate word in my dictionary app as well as a physical, not to say bulky, dictionary. I most frequently use The Oxford Universal Dictionary, a one-volume tome that has been a wonderful resource, as it often contains older terms its digital sibling lacks. The particular edition which sits by my desk is the third, published with addenda in 1955. Of course, some terms require more effort, such as ‘flavescent’, which I believe showed up in a novel by one of the lesser Brontës, if memory serves me well. Always there is the Internet as well, in truly desperate cases. I then create a definition trying to be true to the sense of the word as I encountered it, while not slavishly copying the dictionaries consulted (which would be plagiarism).

Creating a sentence can sometimes be difficult, especially if the word is one I have only rarely seen in my reading. Looking at the word as used over time in different sentences gives me the feel for the word before I trap it in my example sentence. For older words, I consult the former BYU corpora, now English-Corpora dot org, using primarily the Early English Books Online (EEBO), the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), and the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). Like all ‘free’ resources, some of these have begun to throttle my access, though I usually don’t hit the limits in my once-a-week searching.

Keen-eyed observers (if any remain to read this far) will have noted the anomalous ‘2’ at the tail of my 702 Lexicon entries. These represent a couple of bonus words, slang terms which I appended to my usual listing. I may start doing this more regularly, as there are so many non-standard terms which I feel should be preserved, though I may need some divine help if I am to craft sentences for terms like ‘on fleek’ (not a candidate).

I will continue to update the Lexicon with new words from the weekly posts, and may play around with other features and fun. It seems I may have to learn PHP to do some things I’m thinking of, however, and that seems … boring. Especially when I have new Dray Prescot books to read. Let me know if you have features you’d like to see, though, and I will endeavor to make your wishes a reality. And please do let me know of any favorite words you’d like to see on Friday; that I can do much more readily I am sure.

Friday Vocabulary

1. squamous — composed of scales, covered with scales, scaly

She had gotten too close to her idol, and now perceived that the shoulders of his fashionable rope sweater were covered in squamous dandruff flakes, and that he had quite hairy ears.

 

2. cryptesthesia — perception by hidden or paranormal means, such as clairaudience or clairvoyance

Welker preferred to denote the phenomenon as cryptesthesia rather than mind reading, reasoning that some quite mundane mechanism may have delivered the information to the recipient though that person remained unaware how he gained the knowledge.

 

3. bombinate — to buzz, to hum

I prefer The Well-Tempered Clavier of Glenn Gould myself, though I confess that when he bombinates continually it can be somewhat distracting.

 

4. hayward — officer in charge of fences and enclosures, esp. to prevent stray cattle from a commons encroaching upon enclosed fields

The tanner filed a cross-complaint, alleging that his sole milk cow had been maliciously seized by the hayward, who had conspired with Gertrude to allege bovine trespass where none had actually occurred.

 

5. analeptic — strengthening, restoring, invigorating; awakening, esp. from drugged state

After so much weak tea and jello, her analeptic chicken soup was just the restorative I needed to cast aside my sick bed and return to the world of the living.

 

6. blether (also blather or blither) — to talk nonsense volubly; to babble

He really did perform quite heroic feats during the war, you know, though of course we all just assume his tales are false because he is always blethering on about some impossible adventure that current events happen to remind him of.

 

7. vervain — verbena officinalis, a common European plant once much used for its supposed medicinal qualities

I see where druids walked the groves of Mona—I see the mistletoe and vervain

[Whitman]

 

8. pavonine — of or like or resembling a peacock

Leave it to Richard Feynman to demonstrate the mysteries of quantum electrodynamics through the pavonine iridescence of a droplet of oil on water.

 

9. threap — to chide, scold, rebuke, blame, reprove; to bicker, argue, quarrel, dispute

It is foolish to have any discussion with him, as he will threap that the color red is heavier than the blue of the noonday sky, and similar nonsense.

 

10. torpid — dormant, unmoving; sluggish, inactive; lacking vigor, apathetic

Too benumbed even to bother picking up the remote, the torpid young man watched unseeing as Vanilla Ice remodeled yet another fixer-upper during the television marathon.

Friday Vocabulary

1. chalazion — swollen bump on eyelid caused by clogged oil gland

While a chalazion is frequently mistaken for a stye, the latter is usually found at the edge of the eyelid and is quite painful, whereas the former can appear anywhere within the eyelid and does not usually cause pain.

 

2. dissolute — debauched, licentious, morally lax

Ironically, though she had warned her sister about the dissolute old roué, she found herself caught in one of his manipulative schemes.

 

3. condoler — one who expresses sympathy or grief with or for another

Strangely enough, the taxi driver proved to be my best condoler, though I did not realize it as I hastened to the airport for the funeral.

 

4. sequela — morbid consequence of previous disease; any consequence

His weakening mental acuity, the sores which never healed, and his fatigue and general malaise, all were judged to be the normal sequelae of venereal disease during that era, before the discovery of antibiotic drugs.

 

5. fettle — to make ready, to prepare

The housekeeper pretended to fettle the room, cleaning the already spotless candelabras in hope of overhearing some of the latest news from the town.

 

6. curiologic — of hieroglyphic writing in which pictures directly represent objects; of pictorial representation as in a rebus

Early attempts to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics were foiled by the assumption that the mysterious writing was primarily curiologic in nature.

 

7. facetiae — witticisms, humorous remarks or writings, pleasantries

With the decline of formal public speaking, and the replacement of humor by memes, the collections of facetiae which often made up a large portion of the after-dinner speaker’s library have gone the way of most books, vanished like other creatures that outlived their times.

 

8. whence — from what place?; from what source or cause?

Whence comes this urge to waste your life in useless battle against a much stronger foe?

 

9. obtrude — to thrust forward unduly; to push (something) upon a person, esp. without invitation

We felt sorry for her at Lady Roxana’s cocktail parties, where she would obtrude the most callow and weak ideas upon some of the deepest and most insightful thinkers of our time.

 

10. chrism — consecrated oil mixed with balm, used as unguent for certain sacraments; sacramental anointing

Both of the dead drug dealers had an oily residue upon their foreheads, the tell-tale chrism showing that a priest had been upon the scene before the police.

Friday Vocabulary

1. teratogenic — disrupting development of fetus or embryo, thus causing birth defects

Pregnant women should avoid high intake of vitamin A, as teratogenic effects have been noted.

 

2. periapt — amulet, charm

“Do you deny, then, that you used this very periapt to conjure forth your sworn servant, this supposed cat, in fact a demonic minion of the Evil One?”

 

3. quintal — hundredweight

While in the summer pasture our dairy cows each produce almost two quintals of cheese, most of which we take to market.

 

4. throstle — a thrush

I heard his song before I spied the nut-brown throstle perched on a high bough of the apple tree.

 

5. bubo — inflamed swelling of lymphatic gland, esp. in groin or armpit

Though the inguinal bubo in his groin had receded, the venereal disease had not finished its malefic attack upon his health.

 

6. emulous — desirous of rivaling or imitating

With his latest work the Dutch sculptor, emulous of the renown his former mentor still enjoyed at court, hoped to capture the attention of the king.

 

7. fancy-work (also fancywork or fancy work) — ornamental piece of needlework

She sat by the window, her fancy-work forgotten as she heard at last the distant hoofbeats and rumbling of his approaching carriage.

 

8. aquamanile — medieval pitcher, often shaped like an animal

The baron washed his hands under the water poured from the brass aquamanile held over the basin by the new page, the youngest son of Sir Ewen.

 

9. curvet — leap of rearing horse in dressage in which the hind legs are kicked out as the front legs descend; to leap in this manner

The frisking horses were bounding and curvetting in the meadow at the foot of the sedge hills, gloriously happy in the sun and their exuberant youth.

 

10. melena — dark tarry stool

Not only is melena a symptom of serious internal hemorrhaging, it is also the focus of a question or two on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.