All posts in category Genres

4/13/2013

Words from:

Rosemary and Rue
by Seanan McGuire
An October Daye Novel

extemporizing

I was extemporizing wildly, but I had no way of knowing that. [Loc 4882-43]

extemporize: verb

(used without object)
1. to speak extemporaneously.
2. to sing, or play on an instrument, composing the music as one proceeds; improvise.
3. to do or manage something in a makeshift way.

verb (used with object)
4. to make or devise extempore*.
5. Music. to compose offhand; improvise.

* extempore: on the spur of the moment; without premeditation or preparation; offhand

diurnal

[Bane] of night people to deal with—those rare souls who chose a diurnal existence. [Loc 2441-42]

diurnal: adjective

1 .of or pertaining to a day or each day; daily.
2. of or belonging to the daytime ( opposed to nocturnal ).
3. Botany . showing a periodic alteration of condition with day and night, as certain flowers that open by day and close by night.
4. active by day, as certain birds and insects ( opposed to nocturnal ).

undine

[Searching the water for] an undine named Lily. [Loc 2442]

undine: noun 1. any of a group of female water spirits described by Paracelsus*.

Note: Paracelsus first used word undine in his 16th century alchemical work, Liber de Nymphis, sylphis, pygmaeis et salamandris et de caeteris spiritibus.

János Thorma Fiddling Gypsy Couple:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thorma_Fiddling_Gypsy_Couple_1935.jpg

The Rooster Crows, artist unknown
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Rooster_Crows.jpg

Henry Fuseli Title: Hagen und die Undine von Danubius
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Johann_Heinrich_F%C3%BCssli_041.jpg

2 Comments

by klerosier on 04/13/2013 • Permalink

Posted in Looked It Up, Urban Fantasy

Tagged Paracelsus, rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire

Posted by klerosier on 04/13/2013

https://klerosier.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/4132013/

3/30/2013

I’ve been experimenting with audiobooks.

I’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!

7 Comments

by klerosier on 03/30/2013 • Permalink

Posted in Books, kindle, Uncategorized, Urban Fantasy

Tagged Audiobook, Chicagoland Vampires, Chloe Neill, Narrator

Posted by klerosier on 03/30/2013

https://klerosier.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/3302013/

3/23/2013

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

Bacchants carry around thyrsi which are staves wrapped in ivy leaves… (page 50)

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

adjective 3. inclined to revelry.

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.

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.

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

4 Comments

by klerosier on 03/23/2013 • Permalink

Posted in Looked It Up, Urban Fantasy

Tagged Baccus, Hexed, Iro n Druid, Kevin Hearne

Posted by klerosier on 03/23/2013

https://klerosier.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/3232013/

3/16/2013

This Weeks Words are from:

Frost Burned, [Mercy Thompson Book 7]
Patricia Briggs

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

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.]

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]

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

2 Comments

by klerosier on 03/16/2013 • Permalink

Posted in Books, Looked It Up, Urban Fantasy

Tagged Mercy Thompson, nascent, obstreperous, Patricia Briggs, suborn

Posted by klerosier on 03/16/2013

https://klerosier.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/3162013/

3/9/2013

This 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.

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

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

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