David Grambs

As one of those writers who built an entire room onto her house to store all the books with scribbles in the margins, post-it notes, bookmarks, and dog-eared books marking my favorite passages, when the time comes to edit my -own- works, it can be very time consuming (and so much more fun than eradicating adverbs) to sit down in the library and reintroduce myself to my old friends, searching for just the right inspiration to spice up that clunky character description or scene. This book collects many of the best of those descriptions into a convenient form, broken into general categories of description, as well as a thesaurus type listing of many less-used descriptive words. It was what I wanted after reading the reviews, and I am very happy with this concise collection which will give inspiration without making me forget I need to be editing, and not re-reading Atlas Shrugged.… (mer)

This is another one of those “look at this interesting list of archaic, rare, or foreign words for things” books. David Grambs’s Dimboxes, Epopts, and Other Quidams is a collection of terms of different types of people we meet in the course of our lives. This book got me thinking in that while you’ll forget a lot of these words while out in public, when you read the list, you’ll invariably call to mind people who fit the definitions provided. I’ll just spoil for you the definitions of the title terms (you’ll have to read the rest):

• Dimbox: one skilled at smoothing over disputes
• Epopt: an initiate into a secret society
• Quidam: one who is unknown, someone referred to as "what's-his-name"

Also included are terms for ladies with faint mustaches, folks who can’t keep their hands to themselves, over-achievers in the philanthropy department, and pitiable folks whose house has just burned down. It’s breezy, whimsical, and tightly written. If you’ve got a free afternoon and are a word nut, then add this to your collection—it’s worth the money.… (mer)