Diary of a Word Nerd

What does “quid pro quo” mean?

Posted on October 9, 2019 by Julia Tomiak / 2 Comments

Lately, journalists and politicians have been throwing around the phrase “quid pro quo” with gusto. As in, Energy Secretary Rick Perry stating that he was “extremely comfortable” that there wasn’t any “quid pro quo” regarding President Trump’s interactions with officials in Ukraine.

I’m very interested in this news story, but I kept getting distracted by the phrase “quid pro quo”. It’s one of those terms I think I should know but honestly don’t. Enter Merriam-Webster.

The expression quid pro quo \ ˌkwid-ˌprō-ˈkwō \ comes from New Latin and means “something for something”. The phrase was first used way back in the 16th century to describe something obtained from an apothecary, and often referred to exchanging one medicine for another. The expression quickly expanded to describe equal exchanges of all types. Today, it is frequently used in legal situations.

So, regarding President Trump, everyone is curious if Trump orchestrated a quid pro quo with Ukraine – an equal exchange of information (about the Biden family) for financial support to the Ukranian government.

Hopefully, we will find out soon.

If you like to learn new words and the origins of their meanings, visit the Wondrous Words Wednesday meme at Bermuda Onion. Each Wednesday, bloggers share new words they’ve learned.

What’s a phrase you’ve heard lately that stumps you? Maybe the Word Nerd can help!

Thanks for getting nerdy with me!

Book reviews

Why You Must Read Where the Crawdads Sing

Posted on October 4, 2019 by Julia Tomiak / 2 Comments

It’s been on the best seller lists for a while now, and I can understand why. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens is a fascinating study of how a girl, abandoned at a young age, struggles to find her place in a coastal North Carolina town.

Premise

Kya Clark’s mom walked out of the house when Kya was seven and never looked back. Then her brothers and sisters disappear too, leaving her alone with her mercurial, alcoholic father. When he finally abandons Kya as well, she must learn to take care of herself, and the North Carolina marsh becomes her companion and nurturer. Fast forward several years, and a young man from town is found dead at the bottom of a fire tower in the marsh. The people from town think it might be Kya, “The Marsh Girl”, but could she really pull something like that off?

What I liked

Where the Crawdads Sing is full of vivid, beautiful descriptions of nature and human nature. The author, Delia Owens, has previously published non-fiction texts on biology, and her knowledge of nature comes through. Crawdads explores themes of loss, isolation, and prejudice, and how we come to understand other people. Although there is a lot of sadness, I admired Kya’s fortitude and resourcefulness, and adored her love interest, Tate, who watches out for Kya even when she is little and teaches her how to read. Unfortunately, Kya’s status as an outsider, her lack of experience with typical social interaction, and Tate’s few shortcomings, lead to heartbreak and loss for both of them. Kya is indeed a compelling character.

I also liked the structure of Crawdads. The narrative jumps between Kya’s coming of age story and the sheriff’s investigation of the murder, and the interweaving timelines provide intrigue.

What I didn’t like

The last third of the novel is basically turns into a legal drama, with lengthy court scenes that I found dry and less interesting.

Recommendation

I listened to the audio version of Crawdads and found it highly entertaining. Readers who like mysteries, coming of age stories, and studies of human nature would enjoy Where the Crawdads Sing.

Have you read Crawdads? What did you think? What are you reading now that you can recommend? I’ve moved on to Dracula, in honor of Spooktober, and I’m listening to that as well, because there is no way I will read that before bed! 😉

Thanks for getting nerdy with me!

How to encourage reading

Banned Books Around the World

Posted on September 25, 2019 by Julia Tomiak / 2 Comments

It’s Banned Books Week! Every year, the American Library Association (ALA) uses the last week of September to celebrate reading and educate the public about the dangers of censorship. In our country and around the world, books continue to be challenged or banned at the request of parents, religious groups, or government entities. (Banned Books Week banner above courtesy of ALA)

My guest today, Isabel Cabrera, Communications Manager for Global English Editing and The Expert Editor, shares some interesting facts in honor of Banned Books Week. Read on!

Books have been banned for almost as long as people have been writing them.

And in 2019, many countries are still taking it upon themselves to restrict literature they do not like.

Books are banned for a variety of reasons, including claims they are obscene, a threat to the country’s morals, or most typically, that they pose a political threat to the country’s authoritarian elite.

From The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho in Iran to All the Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan in Israel to Bad Samaritans by Ha-Joon Chang in South Korea, governments are curbing what their people can read.

Banned Books Week is a venture by the American Library Association and Amnesty International that shines the spotlight on books previously and currently restricted in the United States. Held in the last week of September each year, the event kicks off Monday, September 23.

In the spirit that adults should be able to read what they want, Global English Editing has created this fantastic map of banned books in different countries around the world. On their blog, you can also read a description of each book and the reasons why each one has been banned.

Thank you Isabel! How are you celebrating Banned Books Week this year? I hope you will spend it educating yourself and spreading awareness about books and the dangers of censorship.

Thanks for getting nerdy with me!

Awesome Young Adult Books/Favorite Authors

A new fantasy to read: STORMRISE

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Julia Tomiak / 4 Comments

The publishing industry is a challenging, competitive business. Thank goodness the writing community behind publishing is supportive and positive. Let me introduce you to one of the people who makes the online writing community so great: Jillian Boehme.

For over ten years, Jillian has supported writers as “Authoress” through her blog “Miss Snark’s First Victim”. She has shared writing advice and her personal journey to publication, as well as many contests that give aspiring authors the chance to get their work in front of agents. I was lucky enough to participate in the Baker’s Dozen contest on Jillian’s blog, and through it, an agent requested to read my full manuscript. (Most agents request to read the full manuscript of just a few of the writing samples they see, so I was thrilled.) The agent ultimately passed on my work, but it was exciting and encouraging to get “a bite”.

Today is a big day for Jillian. Her YA fantasy debut novel, STORMRISE, releases today! We love fantasy and dragons in our house, so I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy. If you also enjoy fantasy and want to support a kind, creative person who has contributed so much to the book world, please check out STORMRISE. Here’s the blurb from Amazon:

If Rain weren’t a girl, she would be respected as a Neshu combat master. Instead, her gender dooms her to a colorless future. When an army of nomads invades her kingdom, and a draft forces every household to send one man to fight, Rain takes her chance to seize the life she wants.
Knowing she’ll be killed if she’s discovered, Rain purchases powder made from dragon magic that enables her to disguise herself as a boy. Then she hurries to the war camps, where she excels in her training―and wrestles with the voice that has taken shape inside her head. The voice of a dragon she never truly believed existed.

As war looms and Rain is enlisted into an elite, secret unit tasked with rescuing the High King, she begins to realize this dragon tincture may hold the key to her kingdom’s victory. For the dragons that once guarded her land have slumbered for centuries . . . and someone must awaken them to fight once more.
From Amazon: STORMRISE

I love a strong female protagonist, but what hooked me the most? STORMRISE is inspired by Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Please check it out! You can find out more about Jillian at her website and on Facebook and Twitter.

Thanks for getting nerdy with me!

Improving vocabulary

What does ignominious mean?

Posted on September 11, 2019 by Julia Tomiak / 2 Comments

This morning on 1A, one of my favorite NPR radio shows and podcasts, host Joshua Johnson interviewed the author of a new book about the 9/11 attack. The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11, by journalist Garrett M. Graff, is a collection of memories of 9/11 from people who experienced it up close.

With the 18th anniversary of the tragedy, Graff is concerned there is a whole generation of Americans who doesn’t understand the emotional significance of the attack because they were too young to remember it. They know the facts of the day (four planes, two towers were destroyed, thousands killed) but they don’t necessarily comprehend how the chaos of that day changed our nation.

Johnson played several clips from the audiobook of The Only Plane in the Sky, including a recording of a man who didn’t go up into the his office in the North Tower on the morning of 9/11because he had forgotten his keys. He was waiting out in a hall, eating a bagel and reading about Dell computers when the plane hit the building.

Listening to his memory made me cry.

One theme discussed during the show was how American perceptions of Muslims and the Middle East has changed since the attack. At one point, Johnson made the comment, “prejudice against Muslims an ignominious consequence of 9/11″. I wasn’t sure what ignominious meant, and it was a very impressive word, so I looked it up.

ignominious \ ig-nə-ˈmi-nē-əs\ from Latin ig (similar to in, without) + nomen (name or repute); when the two are put together, it indicates a namelessness that accompanies shame or dishonor

It means:

marked with or characterized by disgrace or shame : DISHONORABLE
deserving of shame or infamy : DESPICABLE
HUMILIATING, DEGRADING, ex: an ignominious defeat

Good word, Joshua Johnson, very fitting. Thank you Meriam-Webster. The show today, Remembering (or Not Remembering) 9/11, was a great one. I strongly encourage you to listen.

If you like to learn new words and the origins of their meanings, visit the Wondrous Words Wednesday meme at Bermuda Onion. Each Wednesday, bloggers share new words they’ve learned.

Thanks for getting nerdy with me!

Book reviews/Who I Am

Choose happy

Posted on September 6, 2019 by Julia Tomiak / 3 Comments

I love it when a book I’m reading gives me a light bulb moment and I realize I need to seriously change my perspective or my behavior. That’s what happened the other night while I was reading Becoming, Michelle Obama’s memoir.

The light bulb had nothing to do with politics or race. It had everything to do with being a busy wife and mother who feels exhausted and overwhelmed.

When Barack Obama served as an Illinois state senator, he spent many days every week away from home. This created tension in his marriage with Michelle, who also worked outside of the home and cared for their two young daughters.

The tension got so bad that Michelle suggested they go to marriage counseling. Barack agreed, and Michelle went into counseling expecting validation for all of the things she thought were wrong in her marriage.

Instead, she realized what she was doing wrong. She says:

I began to see that there were ways I could be happier and that they didn’t necessarily need to come from Barack’s quitting politics… I’d been stoking the most negative parts of myself, caught up in the notion that everything was unfair and then assiduously, like a Harvard-trained lawyer, collecting evidence to feed that hypothesis. I now tried a new hypothesis: It was possible that I was more in charge of my happiness than I was allowing myself to be.
Michelle Obama, Becoming

Wow. Being in charge of my own happiness. Now, that’s a concept I’ve forgotten of late. My marriage is great, my kids are fantastic, but I’m tired and overwhelmed and often feel like there is not enough time for everything I want and need to do. I spin myself into a grumpy knot of resentment and exhaustion and am helpful and loving to no one.

That’s not the way I want to do this gig.

I have a magnet hanging on my fridge:

Perhaps it’s been there so long I’ve become numb to the message. It’s time to change that.

I can be happy. I can choose to do things each day that bring me joy. Yes, I will still have the laundry and weeding and bills and deadlines and groceries and all the things I don’t like. But I can have the good things too, and I can focus on them instead of what drains me.

I’m not done with Becoming yet, but when I am, I’ll give you a full review, including more nuggets of wisdom from an intelligent, thoughtful woman.

You know she went to Princeton and then Harvard Law, right?

Thanks for getting nerdy with me!