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: chelonian… It doesn’t take much to persuade me to read a memoir. But make the main character a writer who’s exploring a […]
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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: gormless… My father had English-born parents — his dad was a farmer from Cornwall and his mother, a highly educated woman from
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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: syncretic… You may find it odd to see a Halloween type of photo on top of a post running in July, not
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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: nictitating… My reading last week once again proved the limits of a liberal-arts-oriented education. I encountered the fascinating word nictitating in the
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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: doughty… I don’t watch much TV but I was sick with food poisoning last week and that was enough to keep me in bed
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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: cack-handed… I get a great deal of pleasure — and useful information — from my online subscription to the New York Times. Installed, as
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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: effulgent… I can no longer remember how I discovered the heartbreaking New York Magazine story “The Day I started Lying to Ruth,” written
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Reading time: Les 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: hectic… I recently enjoyed a very fine piece of historical fiction, The Gustave Sonata, by Rose Tremain. Set in Switzerland, largely during the
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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: pantheistic… As a writer and editor, I’m fascinated by issues of taste. People often ask me whether a particular book is any
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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: murmurous…. Today’s word comes from a book of short stories, The Shell Collector, by Anthony Doerr. Published in 2002, it predates his spectacular,
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