Words of the year for 2025

Rage Bait (Oxford):  

Online material designed specifically to provoke anger and boost engagement.  Rage bait is online content — posts, articles, videos — intentionally designed to provoke anger, outrage, or strong negative emotions to boost engagement (such as likes, shares, comments) and drive traffic or revenue, leveraging algorithms that favor controversial content for profit.  Rage bait uses inflammatory language, false premises, or divisive topics to make users react, essentially "baiting" them into an argument or heated discussion for clicks and attention.  Oxford University Press named it their word of the year for 2025 because of its widespread impact on online discourse.  I like that this image from Merriam-Webster shows smiley faces which are NOT smiling.  :D

67 (Dictionary.com):  

Nonsensical slang from Gen Alpha, highlighting new communication patterns.  This image from the New Yorker shows two people who are writing those numbers over and over.  Pure nonsense, right?

Slop (Merriam-Webster):  

Digital content, often AI-generated, that is low-quality, misleading, or just plain bad (e.g., "AI slop").

  I already shared this definition, HERE, before I learned about the others.

Monday Musing

It seems there is always "one more thing" to do before I can call it a day, before  I can say,  "I have done all I need to do here."  If I can accomplish that one more thing, then I can smile and say, "I got it all done."  And it is not always getting a few more pages read or another blog post set up.

Cookies and a trilogy

A friend gave me these Holiday Shortbread Cookies, which I'm eating as I type this up for my Sunday Salon post.

The Night Trilogy ~ by Elie Wiesel, 1972, 1985, 2008, memoir + 2 literary novels, 352 pages

Night is one of the masterpieces of Holocaust literature.  First published in 1958, it is the autobiographical account of an adolescent boy and his father in Auschwitz.  Elie Wiesel writes of their battle for survival and of his battle with God for a way to understand the wanton cruelty he witnesses each day.

The short novel Dawn (1960) is about a young man who survived World War II, settled in Palestine, now joins a Jewish underground movement and is commanded to execute a British officer who has been taken hostage.

In Day (previously titled The Accident, 1961), Wiesel questions the limits of conscience:  Can Holocaust survivors forge a new life despite their memories?  Wiesel's trilogy offers insights on mankind's attraction to violence and on the temptation of self-destruction.

Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) is the author of more than fifty books, including Night, his harrowing account of his experiences in Nazi concentration camps.  The book, first published in 1955, was selected for Oprah's Book Club in 2006, and continues to be an important reminder of man's capacity for inhumanity.  Wiesel was Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

• Friday's Book Beginning was posted HERE.
• On Saturday, my subject was snow, HERE.

This has been a slow blogging week, so that's it for today.  And that's it for using this 2025 calendar picture.  There are no more Sundays in this year.

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

A book about snow?

Amy Snow ~ by Tracy Rees, 2015, historical fiction (England), 576 pages

It is 1831 when eight-year-old Aurelia Vennaway finds a naked baby girl abandoned in the snow on the grounds of her aristocratic family’s magnificent mansion.  Her parents are horrified that she has brought a bastard foundling into the house, but Aurelia convinces them to keep the baby, whom she names Amy Snow.  Amy is brought up as a second-class citizen, despised by Vennaways, but she and Aurelia are as close as sisters.  When Aurelia dies at the age of twenty-three, she leaves Amy ten pounds, and the Vennaways immediately banish Amy from their home.

But Aurelia left her much more.  Amy soon receives a packet that contains a rich inheritance and a letter from Aurelia revealing she had kept secrets from Amy, secrets that she wants Amy to know.  From the grave she sends Amy on a treasure hunt from one end of England to the other:  a treasure hunt that only Amy can follow. Ultimately, a life-changing discovery awaits ... if only Amy can unlock the secret.  In the end, Amy escapes the Vennaways, finds true love, and learns her dearest friend’s secret, a secret that she will protect for the rest of her life.  So we have an abandoned baby, a treasure hunt, and a secret.  I'm ready to read it.

Beginning ~ with the Preface

Beginning

Some books can't sit still.  They get fidgety and restless, mumbling to themselves and elbowing their authors in the ribs.  "It's that time again," they say.  "I need some attention here."

Books about English grammar and usage are especially prone to this kind of behavior.  They're never content with the status quo.  That's because English is not a stay-put language.  It is always changing — expanding here, shrinking there, trying on new things, casting off old ones.

Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English (Fourth Edition) ~ by Patricia T. O'Conner, 2019, grammar guide, 320 pages

In this expanded and updated edition of Woe Is I, Patricia T. O'Conner (former editor at The New York Times Book Review) unties the knottiest grammar tangles with the same insight and humor that have charmed and enlightened readers of previous editions for years.  With fresh insights into the rights and wrongs of English grammar and usage, O'Conner offers plain-English explanations to the language mysteries that bedevil all of us.

In this fourth edition, O'Conner explains how the usage of an array of words has evolved.  For example, the once-shunned "they," "them," and "their" for an unknown somebody is now acceptable.  And the battle between "who" and "whom" has just about been won, and not by "whom."  Then there's the use of "taller than me" in simple comparisons, instead of the ramrod-stiff "taller than I."  "May" and "might," "use to" and "used to," abbreviations that use periods and those that don't, and the evolving definition of "unique" are all explained here by O'Conner.  The result is an engaging, up-to-date and jargon-free guide to every reader's questions about grammar, style, and usage for the 21st century.

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    Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts
   Book Beginnings on Fridays.  Click
    HERE for other book beginnings.
============================

365 quotes for next year

Glitter Every Day: 365 Quotes from Women I Love ~ by Andy Cohen, 2021, motivational, 384 pages

Andy Cohen has made a career, and a life, out of making the ordinary extraordinary.  The inspiration for this fabulous view of the world has always come from the incredible women (from his mother to Madonna) he loves.  In Glitter Every Day he shares his most needed words of wisdom from his favorite icons for every day, just in time to kick off the new year.

Andy not only gathers 365 sayings and quotes from the icons, thought leaders, Real Housewives and legendary celebs that fuel his fun, he writes about the people and experiences that have made him live one of the most joyous lives that any little boy growing up in St. Louis could dream of so that you can, too.

Hmm, I've never tried limiting myself to one (tiny) section of a book each day for a whole year, but maybe I'll give it a try this year, starting on January 1st.  Yes, 2026 has exactly 365 days, since it is NOT a leap year.

• On Monday, I mused about my kind neighbor, HERE.
• On TWOsday, I requested TWO things that make you happy, HERE.  No one had posted an answer when I finally listed a couple myself.  It's still open, if you want to add a happy thought (or two).
• Merriam-Webster's 2025 Word of the Year was my Wednesday Word subject, HERE.
• For my Thursday Thoughts, I shared a name (Lillian @>-->---), HERE.  Can you figure out that last name?
• My Friday Book Beginning was about Christmas Day 1962, HERE.

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Beginning ~ on Christmas Day 1962

Beginning

Elwood received the best gift of his life on Christmas Day 1962, even if the ideas it put in his head were his undoing.

The Nickel Boys ~ by Colson Whitehead, 2019, fiction

This novel is based on the historic Dozier School, a reform school in Florida that operated for 111 years and was revealed as highly abusive.  A university investigation found numerous unmarked graves for unrecorded deaths and a history into the late 20th century of emotional and physical abuse of students.

As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to heart, that he is "as good as anyone."  Abandoned by his parents, but kept straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is a high school senior about to start classes at a local college.  But for a black boy in the Him Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future.  Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says ti provides "physical, intellectual, and moral training" so that the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men."

In reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back."  Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you."  His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble.

The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision with repercussions that will echo down the decades.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.

A thought that I first posted in 2014 in answer to a question

If you were to write under a pseudonym, what might that be, and is there a story behind that name?

Maybe Lillian Rose.  Lillian actually IS one of my names, and in the 1990s I used Lillian Rose just to see if I could "be" someone else in an online discussion with a group of my friends.  I "signed" my chat room name something like this:

Lillian @>-->---

Merriam-Webster's 2025 Word of the Year = AI slop

“Slop” was first used in the 1700s to mean soft mud, but it evolved more generally to mean something of little value.  The definition has since expanded to mean "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence."

Creepy, zany, and demonstrably fake content is often called "slop."  The word's proliferation online, in part thanks to the widespread availability of generative artificial intelligence, landed it Merriam-Webster's 2025 word of the year.

I got this information HERE, if you want to view the CBS video about it.

Two words for today

Tell me a couple of things

(yes, list exactly TWO things)

that make you happy on this TWOsday.

I promise to leave a comment myself, and

  I wonder how many of us will mention books.

Musing about my neighbor's kindness

One of my neighbors knocked on my door yesterday, telling me she would be stopping for lunch while she was out and asking if I'd like for her to bring me some okra.  Sure!  Lots of folks here know that's my favorite food.  So an hour or so later, she knocked on my door again and handed me a bag of crispy fried okra.  She wouldn't let me pay for it, saying it was a gift.  It was the best thing I've eaten all week.  Thanks, Freddie!

Sunday Salon

Blue Sunset (Book 2 of 3) ~ by Gregg R. Overman, 2023, science fiction, 417 pages

The aliens just want us all to die. Two men and a Martian “Scout Bug” have other ideas.

Earth is in political and economic turmoil in the wake of an unprovoked alien attack.  NASA abandons the crew on Mars as power shifts to a reactionary political party, but they reconsider when new lights and radiation bloom on the periphery of our solar system.  NASA needs Mars to once again act as the sacrificial lamb for the incoming missiles, but the Mars’ crew has their own problems after one of the missiles strikes Mars and turns the environment from inhospitable to unlivable.  It seems their only choice is death by starvation, hypothermia, or the next alien missile.

Something on Mars awakens after millennia of stasis.  It is hungry, and the human crew on the surface is obviously food, albeit genetically damaged food.  The genetic damage will need to be corrected before the harvest.

Astonishingly, the next round of incoming alien missiles begins communicating, and the Mars Crew learns that the galaxy has been subjected to a reign of genocidal bombardment for thousands of years.  They have suffered much, but the crew on Mars and the fully awake Martians decide to go down fighting.

On Monday, I wrote about a neighbor's 100th birthday, HERE.

Wednesday's Word was "architecture," HERE.

This has been a VERY slow week, so that is all I have for today's blog post.

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Saturday Stuff

What stuff am I thinking about today?  Not much.  I ordered a spiral calendar book for 2026, and it was suposed to arrive today.  Do you want to see it?  Me, too!  However, Amazon hasn't even sent a notice that it is "out for delivery."  So not only am I looking for a calendar to arrive, I am already looking at the new year coming up.  Waiting, waiting, waiting . . . and not very patiently!  It is already after sunset here.

Today's word is architecture

Great Buildings ~ by DK, 2017, architecture, 256 pages, 8/10

This book gives you an overview of the history of architecture from the ancient world to the present day, a guided tour of more than 50 masterpieces of every architectural style, from the Great Pyramid of Giza to Chartres Cathedral, Sydney Opera House, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.  Each building is analysed visually.  CGI cutaway artworks peel away walls to reveal the bones of the building, and close-up photographs home in on details of style.

It takes a global look at both historical and contemporary architecture.  What is the difference between a Doric and an Ionic column?  How does a flying buttress work?  Why do concrete balconies appear to float in thin air?  You will find the answers here, along with a wealth of intriguing stories about the patrons, builders, and architects who made each architectural masterpiece possible.  

It's like being taken on a personal tour by a guide who shows you exactly what to look at.  I especially enjoyed Chartres Cathedral (pp. 72-77) because I've enjoyed walking labyrinths, and this may be the most famous one ever.  "The huge labyrinth, or maze, inlaid in the floor at the west end of the church, symbolizes the pilgrim's journey to Jerusalem and the path of the soul to heaven" (p. 76).  Click HERE to see some of the times I've written about labyrinths on this blog.

A century old, wow!

On my way to lunch in the Cafe today, I encountered a long-time resident and stopped to talk to her.  When I mentioned her birthday coming up on Thursday, she said, "Yes, I'll be a hundred years old."  Few people can say that, Rosita!  Congratulations, and happy birthday to you!

A beautiful children's book for Sunday

Marshmallow Can Do Hard Things ~ by Drew Patchin, illustrated by Jessica Kesler, 2025, children's graphic novel, 28 pages, 10/10

Drew is a student at Parkway Northeast Middle School in St. Louis, Missouri.  Drew loves catching Pokemon, playing with his best friend and little brother Tyler, or snuggling on his service dog, Snoopy.  Notice that I'm talking about the author, here, not the book (yet).  And it's a book I read very carefully, because it was signed by Drew himself.

But Drew isn’t an ordinary middle schooler — he’s a warrior in disguise!  In 2019, at 6½ years old, Drew was diagnosed with brain cancer called Anaplastic Ependymoma.  He received surgery and radiation at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and was the hospital’s youngest patient to do radiation without sedation.  Since then, Drew has battled brain cancer four more times and traveled to Hermann Memorial Children’s Hospital in Houston, Texas, and St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee for treatment and clinical trials.  Drew is supported by many family and friends who make up "Drew’s Crew" and are always supporting him through his journey.

Now about the book:

When the scared little narwhale started to school (after his Mommy had met teachers ahead of time and made plans for him),  When the yello sub picked him up (like our yellow school bus picks up American children), he was ready to go.  Making plans means we can do hard things.

My thanks to Pam for letting me borrow this book.  She's a friend of Drew's family here in St. Louis.  It's such a great book!  I rate it 10 of 10.  (Whoa!  Pam told me, no, that she GAVE me this copy of Drew's book to keep.  Thank you!)

• On Monday, I mused about a Chilean girl in Maine, HERE.
• Friday's Book Beginning was posted HERE.
• Dogs on Saturday/Caturday?  Yes, HERE.

This has been a slow week, so that's it for today.

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Hmm, dogs on Saturday/Caturday?

The Best Dog: Hilarious to Heartwarming Portraits of the Pups We Love ~ by Aliza Eliazarov with Edward Doty, 2023, animal photography, 240 pages

This heartwarming, and comedic collection of pup portraits and stories celebrating the enduring bond we share with our dogs is by acclaimed photographer, Aliza Eliazarov.  Capturing animals’ unique personalities with humor and grace for over a decade, Aliza’s portraits have been exhibited and published widely, including U.S. postage stamps.

From couch potatoes to working dogs, Aliza takes us on a journey revealing the individuality of our loyal companions through dazzling photos and captions that illuminate the deep connection we have with our pets.  You’ll meet Frank, the bulldog who loves a tire; Maggie, the Jack Russell terrier who delivers homemade cookies to lobstermen; Eddy, the hero mutt who saved her farm from a fire; and many more funny and downright adorable pups.

With evocative portraits and hilarious observations, this book will confirm what we already know — dogs really are the best.  (Wait, what about cats?  And this is Caturday, too.)

Beginning ~ with a memory

Beginning

The seed for this book was planted four years ago. I was reading Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue and among its countless treasures I discovered a word (which you will learn in due course) whose unfashionably flaccid meaning quite tranfixed me:  "a mild desire, a wish or urge too slight to lead to action."

Endangered Words: A Collection of Rare Gems for Book Lovers ~ by Simon Hertnon, 2009, vocabulary, 224 pages

Hertnon provides one hundred hand-selected rarities, and breathes life into them with his lucid descriptions of their meaning and engaging examples of their usage.  Thanks to Endangered Words, you no longer have to be at a loss for words or reach for the clichéd and commonplace.  The English language is brimming with ambrosial alternatives, and this compendium offers the cream of the crop.  Filled with words to be treasured for their elegant precision,  Endangered Words is the perfect handbook for writers and an entertaining read for anyone with an appetite for the very brightest gems of the English language.

============================
    Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts
   Book Beginnings on Fridays.  Click
    HERE for other book beginnings.
============================

Beginning ~ with their independent nature

Beginning

From the magnificent tiger to the humble pet cat, few creatures in the animal world are more recognizable than cats.  Cats have been closely associated with people for several thousand years, and yet the cats we keep today as pets have never sacrificed their independent natures as a result of being domesticated.

Understanding Your Cat ~ by Don Harper, 2001, animal care, 176 pages

Cats are extraordinary animals-beautiful, graceful, and athletic.  But it is their behavior that allows them to fit easily into our busy lives as attractive and rewarding pets.  How well do we really understand and interpret the behavior of our cats?  Understanding Your Cat provides fascinating insights into the way a cat behaves, combined with practical advice about caring for cats at different stages of their lives.  It includes useful information and tips on:

• the cat's basic nature
• overcoming bad habits
• providing a safe environment for your cat
• how to establish a good relationship with your cat
• common feline ailments and how to deal with them

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.

Monday Musing ~ about a Chilean girl in Maine

I Lived on Butterfly Hill (Book 1 of 2) ~ by Marjorie Agosin, illustrated by Lee White, 2016, historical fiction (Chile), 454 pages

An eleven-year-old’s world is upended by political turmoil in this story of exile and reunification from an award-winning poet, based on true events in Chile.

Celeste Marconi is a dreamer.  She lives peacefully among friends and neighbors and family in the idyllic town of Valparaiso, Chile — until one day when warships are spotted in the harbor and schoolmates start disappearing from class without a word.  Celeste doesn’t quite know what is happening, but one thing is clear: no one is safe, not anymore.

The country has been taken over by a government that declares artists, protestors, and anyone who helps the needy to be considered "subversive" and dangerous to Chile’s future.  So Celeste’s parents — her educated, generous, kind parents — must go into hiding before they, too, "disappear."  Before they do, however, they send Celeste to America to protect her.

As Celeste adapts to her new life in Maine, she never stops dreaming of Chile.  But even after democracy is restored to her home country, questions remain:  Will her parents reemerge from hiding?  Will she ever be truly safe again?

Accented with interior artwork, steeped in the history of Pinochet’s catastrophic takeover of Chile, and based on many true events, this multicultural book is an ode to the power of revolution, words, and love.