In the literary world, many readers and writers alike are always in pursuit of just the right word for the sake of clarity. .....hopefully not to be presumptuous! (the brazen, egotistical arrogant, not the suspiciously reluctant ones.)
Before I got past chapter 6 in The Personal Librarian, a work of historical fiction book which takes place at the turn of the 20th Century, I had encountered several unfamiliar words. Contextualy, I could define a few. Two words intrigued me because one of them was a librarian's term. Incunabulum. FYI--a book printed before 1501? Who knew? Not this librarian. K-12 school librarians typically don't have rare editions in their collections.
The other intriguing word, chary, I thought was a typo. Contextually, my definition was on target as wary or cautious, on one's guard, but it was NOT a typo. Chary. I didn't pursue the word origin but it was in my Scrabble dictionary so it's a legit word in my eyes, regardless of the source.
BTW, I'm barely into the book, but the racial prejudices of the times seem "spot on." The protagonist, a young black girl passing for white, becomes the librarian for J.P. Morgan. (New fact for me, Morgan's middle name, which he prefers, is Pierpont.) An extraordinary, intuitive, woman of style and wit shares her struggles of preserving her carefully crafted white identity, for the sake of her family's financial well-being, in 1905's racist world in which she lives.
I have a penchant for words. I also have a penchant for tea.
These two go very well together---especially when the words come from a book on my "to read" list for librarians!*
Disclaimer-----Before I uploaded this entry, the book took a few zags and the "changed moral tone" disappointed me.
