3/30/2013

I’ve been experimenting with audiobooks.

mykin Del AudioI’m finding I prefer to read books.  Audiobook narrators read too slow for me so my attention drifts. I really don’t like women narrators imitating male voices—sounds corny at best. Another disadvantage of listening to books involves my Looked It Up posts. Audiobooks are not conducive to highlighting or jotting down words to look up.  For me, hitting stop creates a harsher break, and in spoken sentences pauses feel more disruptive to the story. Yesterday, I finished Some Girls Bite, Book 1 of Chloe Neill’s Chicagoland Vampire Series- narrated by Cynthia Halloway. I liked the story and the narrator was good—her male voices were better than most. But I didn’t write down a single word 😦  Chloe Neill likes to use a hundred dollar word where a five buck word would work, so there were plenty words I would have liked to look up and learn more about.  Hence, no Looked It UP post this week. Sorry, but I did create a new Kindle Guy image for you . (Please pretend my earbud doesn’t look like a shower head.)

So, what are your thoughts on…

Listening to audiobooks VS Reading them?

Narrators imitating voices of the opposite gender?

People who claim listening to a book doesn’t count as reading a book?

Please share your comments!

3/23/2013

Looked that up updated 3-2013

Hexed Iron Druid 3 Words From One Sentence on: Page 50
Hexed by Kevin Hearne
Book 2 Iron Druid Chronicle

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3-23-13 Baccus

Bacchants carry around thyrsi which are staves wrapped in ivy leaves… (page 50)bar for looked that up

Bacchants:
noun  1. a priest, priestess, or votary of Bacchus; bacchanal.  2. a drunken reveler.

adjective  3. inclined to revelry.

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thyrsi – plural  for thrysus:

1. Botany . a thyrse.

2. Greek Antiquity . a staff tipped with a pine cone and sometimes twined with ivy and vine branches,
borne by Dionysus and his votaries.

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Stave:

noun:
1. one of the thin, narrow, shaped pieces of wood that form the sides of a cask, tub, or similar vessel.
2. a stick, rod, pole, or the like.
3. a rung of a ladder, chair, etc.
4. Prosody .

a. a verse or stanza of a poem or song.
b. the alliterating sound in a line of verse, as the w- sound in wind in the willows.

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Image is a segment of painting by Giordano, Baccus mit seinem Gefolge der Faunen und Satyren

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luca_Giordano_001.jpg

3/16/2013

Looked that up updated 3-2013
frost burned, briggsThis Weeks Words are from:

Frost Burned, [Mercy Thompson Book 7]
Patricia Briggs

words for 3-16-2013

obstreperous

obstreperous: adjective
1.resisting control or restraint in a difficult manner; unruly.
2.noisy, clamorous, or boisterous: obstreperous children.

“But if she gets too obstreperous, just let me know.” Page 227

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nascent

nascent: adjective:
1. beginning to exist or develop: the nascent republic.
2. Chemistry . (of an element) in the nascent state.

Two odd lumps that looked like nascent antlers emerge from his head. Page 175
[in reference to a weird sort of fae.]
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suborned

suborn: verb (used with object)
1. to bribe or induce (someone) unlawfully or secretly to perform some misdeed or to commit a crime.
2. in law: a. to induce (person, especially a witness) to give false testimony. b. to obtain (false testimony) from witness.

He suborned them to weaken you and take over the seethe.  Page 293
[seethe is the author’s fictitious word for a unit of vampires]
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Image: Dance Party:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Dance_Party._Dance!_Dance!_2012.jpg
Image: Deer Photo taken by Daniel Mayer:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Young_Mule_Deer_in_Bryce_Canyon_NP.jpeg
Image: Witness at Nuremberg Trials:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Friedrich_Doebig.jpeg
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3/9/2013

Looked that up

frost burned, briggsThis Weeks Words are from:

Frost Burned
[Mercy Thompson Book 7]

Patricia Briggs

Using the highlight feature on my Kindle, I’m now including the actual sentences the words were used in.

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3-9-2013 words

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Parse:
I
thought it meant something like to split hairs.

parse: verb 1. to analyze (a sentence) in terms of grammatical constituents, identifying the parts of speech, syntactic relations, etc.

2. to describe (a word in a sentence) grammatically, identifying the part of speech, inflectional form, syntactic function, etc.

3. to analyze (something, as a speech or behavior) to discover its implications or uncover a deeper meaning: Political columnists were in their glory, parsing the president’s speech on the economy in minute detail.

4. Computers. to analyze (a string of characters) in order to associate groups of characters with the syntactic units of the underlying grammar.

 “Ben [werewolf] half growled, half spoke, but I couldn’t parse anything he said.” Page 19 leather bar

Canids: Pointy teeth?

Canid: noun 1. any animal of the dog family Canidae, including the wolves, jackals, hyenas, coyotes, foxes, and domestic dogs.

“Ariana had a deep-seated and totally justified terror of canids.” [In this case Briggs stretches the word to encompass a werewolf and coyote shape-shifter, both still in human form] Page 32
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Détente: Makes me think of teeth again but not.

Détente [dey-tahnt; French dey-tahnt]

Noun: a relaxing of tension, especially between nations, as by negotiations or agreements.

“It would destroy the détente between those who want to kill the [were] wolves and those who want to see them as good people with a terrible disease.” Page 52

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Images are segments of art from wikimedia commons.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grijze_Wolff.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Loup_garou.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/NIE_Wolf_%26_Coyote.jpg

3/2/2013

Looked that up

Hexed Iron Druid

  Words from

  Hexed by Kevin Hearnes

  Iron Druid Chronicles Book 2

3-2-13 words

Solipsism: Something related to sunburned lips?

solipsism: noun

1. Philosophy . the theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist.
2. extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one’s feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption.

The solipsism of the rising star made casting of support actors difficult.leather bar

Philtre: Related to phial, British vial?

philtre (British) philter (US) noun

1. a drink supposed to arouse love, desire, etc

She broke my little bottle of philtre number nine.

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Fulminate: To culminate, fully?

fulminate:

verb (used without object) 1. to explode with a loud noise; detonate.
2. to issue denunciations or the like (usually followed by against ): The minister fulminated against legalized vice.

verb (used with object)3. to cause to explode.
4. to issue or pronounce with vehement denunciation, condemnation, or the like.

noun 5. one of a group of unstable, explosive compounds derived from fulminic acid, especially the mercury salt of fulminic acid, which is a powerful detonating agent.

The timer  was set to fulminate the bomb in thirty seconds.

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Cropped images from:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Explosions.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Love_Potion.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Echoandnarcissus.jpg