Word Nerds Rejoice!

I managed to escape the bookstore without buying a single cookbook. Yes, I know, a minor miracle. There is a simple explanation, though. I ran out of time before I could peruse the cooking aisle. I did, however, make a contribution to my fellow food professionals by purchasing a reference book on the history of coffee (for an article I'm researching) and Holly Hughes Best Food Writing 2007.

But what's really cool, is the new Bill Bryson book I bought. If you don't know this prolific, bestselling English author, he is best known for A Walk in the Woods about the Appalachian trail and A Short History of Nearly Everything, (the latter which we bought as an audio book and listened to while driving to Crested Butte, to Santa Fe and to Tucson a couple summers ago. It may be a short history of everything, but it's a long, long book...fascinating, but long.)

This new book is Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors. Now, I know not everyone is comfortable curling up with a good dictionary, but I think it's perfectly normal -- and I'm having fun learning the difference between frowsty and frowzy. (The former means stale, the latter means dingy.) I did not know that before I cracked open his book, and am actively plotting my first chance to interject both words in the same sentence.

Word nerds rejoice!