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Ammon Shea recently spent a year of his life reading the OED from start to finish. Over the next few months he will be posting weekly blogs about the insights, gems, and thoughts on language that came from this experience. His book, Reading the OED, will be published by Perigee in July. In the post below Ammon, an expert dictionary reader, reflects on rain.

My girlfriend Alix and I are driving across the country, as people are occasionally wont to do. I know that this particularly American rite of passage is not uncommon but it is one that I have never completed. And so even though we are not in fact driving all the way across I am nonetheless quite excited.

The weather is quite excited as well, and it chooses to make apparent this excitement by raining almost continuously as we’ve driven south and west. I love the rain, and mind its on and off-again exuberance not at all. Each fresh storm that we drive into reminds me of just how sodden English is with its own words for rain.

There are small clutches of largely archaic Scottish words that can describe a different kind of rain, and can be so much more specific than simply relying on drizzle/rain/downpour. There are words such as blirts (’a short dash of rain coming with a gust of wind’), bracks (’a sudden heavy fall of rain’), and driffle (’to rain fitfully…as at the “tail” of a shower’).

There are words for things that have been wet with rain (impluvious), and words that can describe the drip of your clothes when you’ve gotten soaked (platch).

Driving down the highway there is evidence of the rain everywhere, even in those few intervals between showers (also know as hot gleams). The clouds ahead that are dark and ponderous are imbriferous (rain-bringing) and the cars that approach on the other side of the highway and have just passed out of a storm of their own are bedrabbled (made wet or dirty with rain and mud).

There are rain words whose main function is not to describe something, but rather to arouse a vocabularian sense of whimsy, such as hyetal (of or belonging to rain).

I am sure that has hyetal many fine technical uses, but whenever I think of it I simply wonder what sort of things belong to the rain and if the rain ever gets tired of owning them.

My favorite world for rain is the one that comes to mind when we take advantage of a pluvial lull, and stop driving. When we get out of the car the smell of freshly fallen rain rising off the sidewalk and the word that describes this smell inextricably link themselves in my brain–petrichor–and I cannot tell if the word makes me like the smell or the smell makes me like the word or if it matters at all.

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I’ve been busily reading as many of the YA fiction books nominated for the Cybils as I can (up at 5:30am today, 1 ½ books read…). It’s not just reading them, which is fairly straightforward, it’s deciding if they are Good. And one of the factors that constitutes Good in this case is Teen Appeal.

I don’t have any teenagers to buy presents for this Christmas, but I thought that making a list of what books I would give, if I did, might help me sort out how appealing I think some of them are. The list that follows isn't my official Top 10 list, and I have left out a bunch of good books because I think they are simply too depressing to give as happy holiday presents (so although there is one Bad Thing in one of the following books, they are, for the most part, cheerful).

For a Seventh or Eight Grader, boy or girl:

The Wednesday Wars, by Gary Schmidt. I laughed and I cried over this one. Boy and teacher start the year out at war with each other (at least in his mind), but after a few escaped rats, a bit of Shakespeare, and some baseball (the Yankees are the team of choice here, so perhaps not the best gift for Red Sox fans), all is well.

Lemonade Mouth, by Mark Peter Hughes. 5 misfit kids form a band and make friends (in that order). It’s told from the perspective of each of the kids (2 boys and 3 girls), hence its cross gender appeal.
My review

For Older Teens

I’m going with the Gendered Recommendation thing here, which I feel ambivalent about, partly because there are fewer “boy” books I’d buy as presents than there are girl books (1 vs 5), and partly because I think girls are expected to read books with boy heroes and accept that as normative, whereas boys are rarely (I think) given books with girl heroes…*

For a teenaged boy:

Peak, by Roland Smith. I think that loosing part of your ear because it has frozen to the outside of a New York skyscraper is a pretty zippy way to begin a book; it goes on to take the hero to the top of Mt. Everest. Good adventure, interesting characters.
My review

For a teenaged girl who is Romantic, and might in general prefer fantasy:

Red Glass, by Laura Resau. I love this magical, beautiful book about a girl’s journey to Mexico and Latin America, where she must find the courage to go on a quest to save the boy she loves. Full of wonderful people and great images, it also provides a perspective on issues of immigration that I think is very valuable.
My review

For a teenaged girl who is smart with a great sense of humor:

Carpe Diem, by Autumn Cornwall. This book takes an uptight, over achieving girl named Vassar Spore and throws her into the jungles of South East Asia with a nutty grandma and a cute Malaysian cowboy wanabe. Lots of fun!
My review

Other books for girls, that are excellent reads but aren’t lending themselves to easy categorization:

Beauty Shop for Rent, by Laura Bowers
Billie Standish Was Here, by Nancy Crocker
Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend, by Carrie Jones my review

For just about anyone:

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. I have already lent my Cybils review copy to several other adults, which I usually don’t feel compelled to do.

Like I said above, these aren’t necessarily the 2007 YA books I think are the Best, but rather the ones I think make good presents! I’ve also only read about half of the 123 nominated books, so I might add more to this list. Other suggestions (from 2007 only) welcome! But please, none of the dark ones. You can give those for birthdays or something.


*Liz at A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy is currently gathering a list of YA boy’s books, which makes up a bit for the fact that I'm only recommending one...