Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Beyond Words: July 6th, 2011

Beyond Words

Beyond Words is a weekly feature at Reading in White Bear Lake, in which I share the unfamiliar words I have encountered in my reading over the past week or two. This is a great way for me to build my vocabulary from what I am reading as well as share with others. 

Remember…..you are never too old to learn!! I love learning and reading, what better combination could there be.

The gift of using words best comes from knowing words
as intimately as you know your own family.
-Lloyd Edwin Smith-

New words to me this week:

Aspersions – (noun) : a false or misleading charge meant to harm someone's reputation <cast aspersions on her integrity>
Listen to the Audio Pronunciation
page 19, Come Sunday by Isla Morley
“ I knew better than to argue, especially after all the champagne, and I certainly knew better than to cast aspersions on her expertise, but dammit, why did it always have to be my fault?”

Banal – (adj) : lacking originality, freshness, or novelty : trite
Listen to the Audio Pronunciation
page 35, Come Sunday by Isla Morley
“the thought of even the most banal verbal exchange makes the dizziness return, so I go pee and climb back into the dark sea.”

Slaked – (verb) : satisfy, quench <slake your thirst> <will slake your curiosity>
Listen to the Audio Pronunciation
page 77, Come Sunday by Isla Morley
“I cannot say, for example, how long my mother slaked her thirst with the gin bottle.”

Come Sunday by Isla Morley - - (from Amazon.com) In her poignant first novel, former South African magazine editor Morley explores a mother's grief. Abbe Deighton, part-time journalist and full-time wife and mother, finds herself living in Hawaii with her preacher husband, Greg, and precocious three-year-old daughter, Cleo, thousands of miles from her South African birthplace. Her flight from an abusive father and complicit mother is not accidental—her poet brother also fled to America—and when Cleo is killed in a car accident, Abbe re-examines the choices that have brought her so far from home. She and her husband become estranged as he turns to God and forgives the man who killed their daughter while Abbe descends into self-pity and anger at the unfairness of life. Their marriage suffers and Greg loses his job, forcing Abbe to turn homeward for financial help. Upon returning to South Africa, she confronts the ghosts of her family's past and the reality of her homeland's future. Morley convincingly depicts a grief-stricken woman without resorting to clichés, and though she telegraphs the resolution of Abbe's plight early on, the storytelling, line by line, is rather beautiful.

I enjoy learning and increasing my vocabulary and I hope you will too!

Happy Reading!

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