Christopher Buckley's lovely tribute to his mom, Patricia Buckley, and infamous father, William F. Buckley, Jr., Losing Mum and Pup, is the only book, other than Moby Dick (the original) that I've read with a dictionary in my lap (actually Wikipedia up and frequented).A short list of phrases and words that I circled in pencil to further investigate include: droit du seigneur, paradigmatically, perfervid orison, intransigence, apparatchik, exigent, diktaks, adipose, adduce a tropism; and that's just about three-pages-worth!
It's not that I haven't heard or seen these words, it is just that Christopher Buckley throws them around like slang, and I loved it. I loved it because for the too short period of reading this book, I felt transported to another world - a world of the intelligentsia - and indeed, which wasn't as important to me, a world of uniquely east coast heritage, entitlement, wealth and privilege, that is as alien to this little west Texas gal as Martians.
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