A welcome addition to a logophile’s arsenal—the last word, we learn, coming from an Arabic phrase meaning “house of...
An iPad-only app that displays networks of word associations in trees that unfold into branches and sub-branches of meaning.
Words have meanings—and sometimes subtle ones. Words also live in communities that a “fancy-pants” (“superior or high-class in a pretentious way”) would call a “semantic domain.” Playing within that domain is the strength of this well-made app, which leverages the power of the Oxford English Dictionary to provide definitions and pronunciations. It also leverages mind-mapping principles (as found in software such as iThoughts and PersonalBrain) to show where a word lives within its community: Type “eat” into the search box, for instance, and up floats a cloud of words that includes the phrases “eaten up,” “what’s eating you,” “eat like a horse” and “eat someone out of house and home,” among other possibilities. Tap on the boldface term “eat,” and up springs a diagram with paths to noun, verb, phrases and phrasal verbs; follow the verb to the general idea “consume,” and up spring “snack,” “graze” and “nosh” along one branch (the informal one, that is), with possibilities that include “scarf,” “snarf,” “ingurgitate” (rare, the app helpfully notes) and “stuff one’s face.” If readers need a record of this groaning board of synonymy, then with a tap, an 1100 x 1576 pixel poster can be generated for printing, emailing or even posting on Facebook. The relationships among synonyms, antonyms, parts of speech and the like offer endless avenues of exploration; add to that the ability to reorder trees by dragging and dropping, and the word lover who chomps into this treat may never emerge. The user interface is both beautiful and unobtrusive, and it is easy to add words to a list of favorites, as well as to keep track of one’s journey through the rabbit hole by way of a history function.
A welcome addition to a logophile’s arsenal—the last word, we learn, coming from an Arabic phrase meaning “house of industry,” though this is a lot more fun than all that.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Schematix
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2012
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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