Posted by Anne M on Sunday, Oct 30, 2016
Tonight we celebrate the night before Halloween. Well, we don’t. We have no word for such a concept. But if you find yourself in Michigan (Devil’s Night) or northern Vermont (Cabbage Night), or parts of New Jersey (Mischief Night), or other parts of New Jersey (Goosey Night), or even other parts of New Jersey (Gate Night), they are celebrating something, most likely by doing something they shouldn’t, and you’ll need to know what to call it. Josh Katz’s new book, Speaking American is here to help sort that all out for you.
You might remember Katz’s New York Times quiz that could predict where you grew up by asking what you would call a certain concept or how you would pronounce a specific word. In this book, he has compiled a great collection of words and phrases, along with their meanings to illustrate these differences—far beyond the twenty-five in the quiz. Map the “trash can vs. garbage can” divide. Find out how many ways Americans pronounce crayon? And if you need another reason to look down your nose at Cleveland, they are the only ones who call the strip between the sidewalk and the road a tree lawn. If you love language and maps (and charts and graphs), you’ll love this book too. If anything, it is guaranteed to spark conversation.
So, what do you call “a sale of assorted household items?”
A tag sale.
[Yes, it is too a tag sale.]
About the Author
Anne Mangano has worked for the Iowa City Public Library since 2008, serving as the Collection Services Coordinator since 2013. In this position, she oversees ICPL's collection, including the selection, cataloging, processing, repair, and removal of materials, including the library's digital collections. Anne holds a Bachelor of...
In Sarah Perry’s “Enlightenment,” the past is a circle. In her latest novel, we meet Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay. Steeped in a shared unshakeable faith, they both don’t belong to their small English village or their small Baptist church—or at least they don’t feel that way. While the decades that span between their ages makes their friendship unlikely, they bond through turning their eyes to the past, and more importantly the cosmos. It’s 1997 and Hart, a newspaper columnist for the “Essex Chronicle,” is told by his editor to write about Hale-Bopp, the great comet visible to the eye that year. This assignment leads Hart down a rabbit hole. He develops a new love of physics, and more importantly, an obsession with a local astronomer who vanished a century before. This need to solve the mystery of Maria Vaduva alters the course of thirty years (or was this always the course?), stretching and straining the relationship of Thomas and Grace—two people in orbit. You can argue with yourself about what is the gravitational pull. It is a splendid book. -Anne M