Encyclopedia P

Yesterday I didn't have much to do, so I decided to read a book. I've been on a reading kick lately, and am determined to read as many books as possible before school starts. I chose the book with the thinnest spine on my shelf, which happened to be A Wrinkle In Time. I remember reading this book in the 5th grade, and just "not getting it." So I figured I'd try again. It is less than 200 pages so I figured I could have the whole thing read before I went to bed.

I'm still not entirely sure what I think of the book. It was interesting. Written in the 60's but held strong themes of time travel, physics, and 5th dimension as described by Stephen Hawking. While I was reading, I noticed the extremely blatant Christian symbolism, which made me think. It wasn't as obvious as say, works by C.S. Lewis, but it was there nevertheless.

Anyway, part of my reading binge has to do with my wanting to increase my capacity for self expression. As mentioned before, I have the emotional range of a teaspoon, and the communication skills of a man. I feel that by reading and allowing my imagination to open up, I'll have an easier time formulating what goes on my head into words, photography, etc. In order to begin increasing my vocabulary I turned to a trick I learned in High School. Post-its.

I bought the tiny sized post-its and every time I came across a word I didn't know, I'd write it down along with the definition and leave the post-it in the book. As it turns out, in the 187 pages of the book, there were only 7 words I was unfamiliar with. Of these 7 words, 4 of them began with the letter P.

Prodigious

Peremptory

Propitious

Pedantic

Did you ever see the episode of Friends where Joey encounters an Encyclopedia salesman, however he can only afford one book? He ends up buying the "V" encyclopedia. I think he was on to something...