positive pleasure and positive pain

"Tess had never before known a time in which the thread of her life was so distinctly twisted of two strands, positive pleasure and positive pain."

I'm part of a book club called Read With Me and the current selection is Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. So far, I'm in love with Thomas Hardy's ability to write beautiful descriptions but I am getting a little impatient with some of the characters and the dialogue. I still have a long way to go... I'm on chapter 31 and there are 59!

bragging, a little

How do I announce this in a humble way? Um... my work is IN THIS BOOK! { 1,000 Handmade Greetings by Laura McFadden }

verbivore

Words. I love words. In fact, I think I might be a word snob. I refuse to use abbreviations in my text messages, forum posts and blog posts. I still use proper punctuation, spell words out completely and always check my spelling. And, since I have never in my life actually spoken the phrase "laugh out loud" I find that I have no need to use that ever-so-popular abbreviation in my writing. Never. A little pedantic, I know, but someone has to preserve 'real language' before we all forget how to spell; before we humans start to communicate purely with abbreviations.

I don't know why I love words so much. I just do. I'm a verbivore. When I was in college, our college radio station broadcast word etymology snippets in a program called Chrysti the Wordsmith and I thought the program was brilliant. Word origins are totally fascinating. In fact, as soon as Chrysti published a book, I ran out and bought it (Verbivore's Feast: A Banquet of Word & Phrase Origins From Chrysti the Wordsmith).

Anyway, what's not to love about language and words and letters? This week, my favorite word is invective, a noun that means "highly critical or insulting language."