Peter Bowler

I do not remember the last time I found the premise of a book to be so off-putting. From the outset, author Peter Bowler states his purpose quite plainly: “Words are not only tools; they are also weapons. The first object of this book is to provide the ordinary man in the street with new and better verbal weapons.” Really? A volume devoted to introducing readers to archaic, little-used words with which they can humiliate and belittle their friends and colleagues? It has been a while show more since I read Dante, but I think he designated one of the nines circles in the Inferno to people who do things like this.

After introducing many of the words—which are conveniently placed in alphabetical order, although this book falls far short of qualifying as a dictionary—Bowler instructs us on how to best use them to our advantage. For instance, after defining ‘noisome’ as noxious or smelly, he notes that “Much quiet satisfaction can be derived from putting your head around the door of your younger brother’s room, saying ‘It’s rather noisome in here, isn’t it’ and hearing him turn down his stereo as you go on your way.” Hilarious, absolutely hilarious!

Ultimately, this amounts to nothing more than a silly little book of synonyms for words and expressions that are conveyed more simply and effectively thousands of times every single day. Is the goal of such a list to improve our collective speech by making it more colorful or precise? Hardly. Here is the author’s entire entry for ‘mucilage’: “The Superior Person does not use gum, glue, or paste. He or she uses mucilage.” Superior, indeed. show less

I love this. It's not at all what I expected, but it's better. What I was expecting was a narrative of larger words and their meanings but what I actually got was a dictionary of big words, with definitions meant to be witty and sarcastic, with usage suggestions for making you look pompous and as the title promises, superior. It's hilarious.

An example from just randomly opening a page:

Infundibular: a.: Why say 'funnel-shaped' when you can say 'infundibular'?

or

nugatory: a. Of no value, show more trifling, insubstantial, pointless. Unfavorable criticism of the present book could properly be so categorized.

or lastly:

ponophobia: n. A morbid dread of work. Think about it. A civil servant could get a whole lifetime's sick leave out of this.

These aren't even the best ones - just the first ones I found while writing this. It's fun, it's educational and it was a wonderful surprise on the sale table. show less

Anabel lives alone with her cat, as a police analyst she hides in her cubicle at work and her social life revolves around getting groceries and dinner for her mother a few times per week. Coming home from her mother’s one evening she discovers her cat reeking and sticky. As she follows said cat to find out what she has been into, she discovers her neighbor, sitting in an armchair in her living room … quietly decomposing. Feeling totally disgusted and then slightly guilty at not even show more noticing her neighbor’s absence Anabel accesses her work computer to see if any other people are ever found in similar situations. What she finds disturbs her. As it turns out the number of people found in just such circumstance is staggeringly high in her little community. They just seem to lock their doors and die without anyone ever noticing they are missing. Although it appears no crime has been committed, she teams up with a young reporter and then a senior police officer to help her look into what is going on. Anabel finds out soon enough, when her own lonely existence comes to the attention one seriously disturbed gentleman.

This book is most definitely a psychological thriller. It moves slowly (very slowly!). And it is one of the few books in recent memory that has made me seriously cringe. Ms. Haynes seems determined to make us understand a psychopath’s thought process not only in excruciating but also in very cringe-worthy detail. Contrasting that to Anabel’s quiet, mouse-like life makes the villain so much more evil. An interesting part of this book is that as each body is discovered, the “victim” shares a short vignette about his or her own life and why they felt compelled to die, which adds a touch of the poignant.

All in all this was a very dark and disturbing book. show less

The author contends that "A Superior Person ins not defined by income, class, or sex. A Superior Person uses Superior Speech." He then provides an alphabetical list of some very fun, and definitely obscure words, like vecordious and lucripetous and papuliferous. His definitions and examples of usage are often quite humorous (such as offering as an example of an oxymoron "delicious sauerkraut"), and there are intermittent very funny, whimsical illustrations by Dennis Corrigan. My one show more complaint is that there is no guide for pronunciation, so whenever I have wanted to use one of these words, I have had to go look it up in another book. Admittedly, I wouldn't have known even to look up the word had I not seen it in this book, but it would have been nice to have everything in one volume. show less