Simon Winchester

I like to read non-fiction. It's an easy read, you educate yourself and there's no tension in stopping mid-sentence at bedtime. John McPhee, Mark Kurlansy, and Simon Winchester all figure prominently in the personal library.

Simon Winchester's most recent work "A Crack in the Edge of the World" ruined it. He has a new and unnatural urge to dip deeply into the thesaurus. (The origami book jackets remain a fixture.) Below is a complete list of the world I had to stop and look up. many were technical terms a geologist would know, some were typos but most wee just him being difficult. (I've excluded those technical terms he included in the appendix.)


umbos
terminator line
ailanthus
orogeny
febrile
annus mirabilis
skein
kittieakes
fulmars
post hoc ergo propter hoc
auguries
gasconading
lickspittle
panjandrum
hobbledehoy
sauve qui peut
lumpenproletariat
quotidian
archdruidical
ultramafics
minié
cordilleran
allotropes
coesite
sishtovite
niggle
E pur si muove
mountain cwn (might be a typo)
sunder
long chalk (British idiom)
plashes (typo)
friable
serried
soda lakes
bathyscapes
nosegay
inapposite
tisanes
saturnalia
skerries
quayside
louche
melodeons
sartorial
laager
magisterial
penuriousness
cuboids
brocade
capo di tutti capi
sylph-waisted
Liebfraumilch
phaetons
hansoms
cupola
chance medley (British idiom)
porte cochere
whiffletree
pilaster
phylloxera
asperities
nullahs
rills
caryatids
galangal
pour memorie
xenolalia
jeremiad
maunderings
périphériques
quotidian
hectopascals

And of course the quote:
"The locals are seemingly obsessed with constant stories of death (as fishermen drowning in sudden storms, birds perishing in their hundreds of thousands, beaches made exclusively from the crushed bones of fish skeletons, various species of flora and fauna dyning out as the level of salinity, which is already close to that of the pacific ocean keeps on climbing in the hot and pitiless sunshine)."