Last week in this letter I talked about the new bookcase I had gotten and about filling it. In the process of moving books around, I came across a reference book that has gotten so much use over the years it now exists as four separate parts—the spine, the front cover, the back cover and the pages, the latter fortunately still sturdy.

It’s a good thing too because this book is going to be used for the rest of my life. It is much too useful to consider replacing. The Synonym Finder by J.I. Rodale has been a part of my writing life since shortly after its publication in 1978. I found it in my favorite (and much mourned since its closure) bookstore, the Earthling, when I was looking for a thesaurus to help me in writing a brochure. I was stuck on one word that I had been using repeatedly throughout the text. Despite my best attempts I simply could not find a decent synonym in my brain for it.

Looking for a reference book—be it a thesaurus, dictionary, quotations, or other work—can be daunting. There’s really only one way to approach it, and that is comparison shop by choosing one word or one subject and see how each book handles it. In my case, it quickly became obvious that this book was far better for my needs than any other. It didn’t clutter its pages with word definitions or pronunciation guides. Instead, it simply presented every synonym it could find for each word after identifying it as a noun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition and so on. After that, it’s up to each user to take those words and do further research, to determine which one is suitable to the occasion.

In addition to being one of my favorite reference books, it has long been a source of linguistic joy for me. Words I’ve never known before coming across them in my searches have entered my vocabulary. I find history, humor, appalling sexism (the synonyms for man and woman are exceptionally enlightening), time travel (archaic words) and much more. The Synonym Finder is not just a reference book. Indeed, it is a world unto itself that like the flower petal opens up to reveal many more worlds within. All I need to do is pluck.

Pat Barker’s Class Life is the focus of Nicki Leone’s column in A Reading Life. The characters’ struggle to find and define themselves as artists comes up against the ugly truth of war is heartbeat of this new novel that Nicki finds “thick with fear, horror, desperation and also compassion and bravery and sheer dogged determination.”

Kat Warren returns to Bibliopinions with another of her famous lists. This one: Western novels. Some of the books she lists are well-known ones, others—you might be surprised to learn this—are contemporary. But all are, as she puts it, “mighty fine reading.”

Mass entertainment is so much a part of most of our lives—be it television, movies, the Internet, reading or radio—that we take it for granted. It’s always been there, right? Wrong. In On Marking Books, I explore the early history of the first corporate mass entertainment company, NBC, whose tours of their radio studios at Rockefeller Center were a magnet for their audiences.

The death of Kurt Vonnegut in April 2007 and the upcoming publication of a new collection of his unpublished writings and sketches one year after his death are a reminder of how influential a writer and cultural critic he was. Henry Carrigan tackles the man who was Vonnegut in this week’s Readings.

The thin line between tragedy and comedy may be the same line that differentiates creativity and insanity. Lisa Guidarini explores what a recent Chicago Tribune article said to her this week in Reviews & Reflections.

Good books can be like good food—both are worth the wait and both are worth savoring. This week, Anne Michael, in Seasoned Lightly, takes a look at how her perception of eating has changed and how closely it now reflects her pleasure in a great book. 

If you are addicted to books as I am and if your budget has a limit to it as mine does, you may want to know about my favorite book remainder dealer: Edward R. Hamilton. They offer many thousands of books at a minimum of 30 percent off the listed price (for new books) to as low as $1.95. And regardless of how many books you order, the shipping and handling charge is a mere $3.50!

You must pay by check, and they use media mail so it could be three, even four weeks before you see your books. I like that, though. It’s like a surprise gift in the mail. But if you want your order a bit faster (eliminating the time it takes your check to get there), you can use their online site, Hamilton.com. The only change is that there is an additional charge of 40 cents per book for shipping. 

What’s extraordinary about this company is its customer service. They say that you must be satisfied with any book or you can return it for a full refund with no questions asked. They mean this. Their service is nothing short of astonishing, as is their nearly 100-page, oversized monthly catalog. Enjoy.


Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren