Today is National Word Nerd day. This might not prompt the same reason for celebration as National Ice Cream Day or National Take Your Pet to Work Day for most folks. But for people like me, National Word Nerd Day is a chance to get your word freak on. In anticipation of today's celebration, I was reading back through some of my previous posts about my pride in being a "wordie" (I think I like that description better than word nerd) - describing pet grammar peeves , writing poetry about my love of a purple pen or describing the joy of receiving a hand-written note . Who else but a dedicated wordie could write about the relationship between smoking a pork butt and writing ? A quick glance around my home and office illustrates it’s clear I qualify as a world class word nerd. Just a few examples: · Your choice of clothes illustrates your word nerdiness. My “grammar police” t-shirt is always on the top of my t-shirt pile when I op...
Like many people, I decided to do no more reading about, listening to or watching anything about the Murdaugh case once the trial ended in March 2022. I had no interest in what podcasters, movies, tv series, books, blogs or news hounds had to say once the sentencing was over. That was until I saw that Valerie Bauerlein had written a book about the trial. I’d crossed work paths with Valerie back in her early career when she worked at The State newspaper in Columbia. I continued to follow her writing through her Wall Street Journal work. I knew this book would not be the sensational, rumor-ridden, speculative narrative that so many writers, podcasters, movie producers and news people had resorted to post-trial. I wasn’t disappointed. Valerie’s direct news writing style intersecting with the narrative skill of an empathetic storyteller makes this book engaging, interesting, easy to follow, and a pleasure to read. One of my favorite sentences of the book comes on page 23 with the descr...
"The Women" by Kristin Hannah came recommended to me by several people ranging in age from young 20s to late 80s. It’s the Vietnam-era story of a 21year-old nurse, Frankie McGrath, from a wealthy (and rather sheltered) southern California family. She naively volunteers for an Army Nurse Corp tour in Vietnam following the death of her brother in the war. I was initially drawn to the book because my recollection of the Vietnam War is vague. I was 12 when the soldiers returned home. My parents hadn’t allowed us to watch news coverage. I knew one person who had lost a father in the war. I had a POW bracelet. We never really studied Vietnam in school because that era wasn’t quite yet “history” in the late 70s and early 80s. That was my limited context going into this book. While on her first tour, Frankie lives with and works alongside two other nurses from backgrounds vastly different from hers. These three nurses build a lifelong bond of friendship that carries them through...
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