Have you ever completed the Word Power feature in Reader’s Digest? I’m not much interested in such games – I don’t even do crosswords! – but I am committed to increasing my own vocabulary. Why? Because if I know more words, I’ll be able to read more fluently. But even more important, I’ll be able to write better. Knowing lots of words allows me – and you — to be more precise in writing. In my word-of-the-week feature I share a word with you that I’ve discovered in my own reading.
Reading time: About 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: walleyed. While on holiday recently, I read the memoir Undress Me In the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman. The story of Gilman’s 1986 trip to China
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: cynosure. I’ve been a longtime fan of the writer Julian Barnes. And I think his 2005 novel, Arthur & George, is my favourite.
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: lambent. I don’t typically read autobiographies written by TV performers, but I made an exception for Kate Mulgrew, one of the stars of
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: kerfuffe… I read the novel Death in Summer — a sort of a mystery with more emphasis on human emotion rather than plot
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: halcyon. I had never known the shameful story of the Hungarian Gold Train until I read Ayelet Waldman’s striking 2014 novel, Love and
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: folderol. When I re-read the 1963 novel The Group, recently, I was struck by the notion that our collective vocabularies have become less
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Reading time: Just over 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: cynosure… I’m always thrilled when readers suggest books I can read. About two months ago, Harry Herskovitz recommended to me In the Kingdom of Ice:
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: aldehydic… The novel The Perfume Collector by Kathleen Tessaro was a book I shouldn’t have bothered to finish. The story — about
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Reading time: Just over 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: tycoon. Right now I’m reading the non-fiction book, In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides. (Thanks so much to the reader who recommended it.) It tells
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Reading time: Less than one minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: celerity… While on holiday last weekend I was reading a novel that I’d describe as chic lit meets the Da Vinci Code. Not
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