Word Woman

Welcome to another mind-bending episode of Word Woman's Weekly Work-Out! A mind is a terrible thing to waste, so keep yours active by learning new words. Here's the Word of the Week to get you started:

Bafflegab: [noun] confusing or unintelligible speech; doublespeak. -- "Hatchet Jobs and Hardball: The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang", Grant Barrett, Ed., Oxford University Press, New York, 2004.

Example: Brian tried to cover his lack of expertise on the subject of biology by reciting a bunch of bafflegab he had read on the internet.

Planning for the Future!

If you hadn't noticed, we just wrapped up a 2 year remodel. Of course, we are still looking at doing more to serve YOU, our patrons, better. To that end, we have prepared a survey on our webpage soliciting ideas for the future from you. Take our survey and let us know what you'd like to see from us in the future. We'll take the results and start writing a brand new long range plan. Get involved, let us know what you want us to provide!

MPL Writing Contest

(Original photo by Flickr user: the trial. Some Rights Reserved)

The deadline for our first annual writing contest is fast approaching! Entries will be due on March 15th. Official rules and entry form are located here.

And if you're really motivated, you can also submit your entry to the Coeur d'Alene Public Library, who served as our mentor in setting up our rules and contest.

Good Luck!

Review of the Week!

Warm up with a good book, earn a free coffee drink, and win great prizes! Join the Winter Reading Program.


This week we're featuring Connie Acker's review of Interpreter of Maladies: Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri:

"Lahiri's writing is wonderful. It is effortless reading as you are pulled into the lives of her characters. Excellent!"

Don't miss Febraury's Winter Reading Event! Local author Debra Earling will thrill you with a tale at the Adult Story Time on Wednesday, Feb. 25 at 7:00 p.m. Monthy prize drawing!!

Word Woman

Welcome to another weird and wonderful installment of Word Woman's Weekly Work-Out! Keep your brain in tip-top shape by doing sudoku, crossword puzzles and (my personal favorite) expanding your vocabulary. Let's get a jump on things with the Word of the Week:

Dime novel: A short piece of adventure fiction published in the latter half of the 19th century, usually set in the West or on the frontier and written with stereotypical characters and formulaic plots.
Erastus Beadle brought out the first series of dime novels starting in 1860, and some were hugely successful with the mass audience. Typical dime-novel characters were Deadwood Dick and Hurricane Nell. Buffalo Bill and Calamity Jane were actual Westerners used as characters in these adventure stories. Perhaps the best-known dime novelist was Edward Z. C. Judson, who wrote under the pen name Ned Buntline.
The term came to be used as descriptive of an improbable heroic fantasy -- dime-novel hero, dime-novel rescue. It also yielded the forms dime novelist, dime-novelism, dime-novelish and even dime-novelly. There were also half-dime novels, which sold for a nickel. Not a Westernism, but an Eastern term for a pseudo-Western product. -- "Dictionary of the American West", Winfred Blevins, Facts on File, Inc., New York, 1993.

Example: Edgar played the role of the hero to dime-novelish excess, much to the dismay of the rest of the cast.