In January, a friend and I started a two-man book club. I’m happy to say that we finished all 12 books by 2022. We read, in alphabetical order:
- Artemis by Andy Weir
- Deliverance by James Dickey
- Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Fat City by Leonard Gardner
- Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
- Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
- Recursion by Blake Crouch
- The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup
- The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
- The Red Market by Scott Carney
- The Worldly Philosopers by Robert Heilbroner
- Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
As English is my second language, I have a habit (started in grade school) of jotting down words I don’t know and looking them up. This year, I learned the following 30 words, in alphabetical order (definitions are truncated or simplified so I can easily recall them):
- Apophenia – the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things
- Becalmed – leave (a sailing vessel) unable to move through lack of wind
- Benignity – kindness towards others
- Bole – main stem of a tree
- Contumelious – arrogantly insolent
- Countenance – face or facial expression
- Crèche – Christ Nativity scene tableau
- Demijohn – narrow necked bottle (3-10gal), typically enclosed in a wicker cover
- Denuded – stripped bare (of something)
- Doghead – hammer of a gunlock
- Dulcimer – Appalachian fretted string instrument
- Expatiate – to write at length or in detail
- Gunwale – upper edge of the side of a boat or ship
- Hectoring – talking in a bullying manner
- Ingénue – innocent young woman in movie or play
- Jamb – side post or surface of a doorway or window or fireplace
- Kir – French cocktail (white whine + creme de cassis)
- Mast – nuts (such as acorns) accumulated on the forest floor and often serving as food for animals
- Natty – smart and fashionable
- Nebbish – timid ineffectual submissive (man)
- Obdurate – stubborn
- Oracular – relating to an oracle
- Parvenus – a person of obscure origin who has gained wealth (derogatory)
- Punctilio – a fine or petty point of conduct or procedure
- Pusillanimous – timid and cowardly
- Saturnine – slow and gloomy
- Superannuated – obsolete through new age/tech
- Sybaritic – opulently self-indulgent
- Unstintingly – without restraint/unsparingly
- Worsted – textured fabric with no nap
Happy New Year, and here’s to 2022 🥂