Cheryl Truman on books

And really, I don’t see why more book marketers don’t take to this bit of golden marketing from Semantricks:
A dictionary of words you thought  you knew.

It’s not a safe book for the kiddies, but decent pocket-sized material to haul along for a doctor’s office visit or other occasion where you have may a long wait in surroundings in which one of those DNA/babymama “Maury” editions will be on the waiting room TV and there’s only a collection of well-worn (and hence, intensely germy) old Sports Illustrated issues to read.

Example:

Carnival: Meat eaters festival.

Get it? Get it? Try to hold in those sides, lest they burst from your laughter.

Still, for pocket or bathroom, it’s not a bad mini-book — although, Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Books? $12.95? Really? You guys must be the ones with the sense of humor.

Anyway, the wonderful foreword:

“It’s enough for us that you’ve bought this book:; no need to read it. Give it to someone you dislike. If you dislike the person a lot, give two copies. For anyone who is inclined to read it, we advise small takes. A little of this material goes a long way. And yet, paradoxically, all of it doesn’t go very far.”

Consider how often a right-up-front admission of mediocrity would save us from the purchase and dogged reading of what is, after all, very bad literature.