The Prodigal Tongue: the Love-Hate Relationship Between American and British English, by Lynne Murphy is a book I am pretty sure my Mom would have loved. The author is a linguist and can talk about the history of words, sentence structure and so forth. Sometimes that made the book feel a bit like a text book ... however ... the author has a good sense of humor and made some wonderful observations on variations on the English language ... and that made the book fun to read. My biggest chuckle came when I learned that bumbershoot is not a British term!

I am part of a monthly Game Day and recently we played Clue. The traditional version! Two of us have played an updated game and did not like it and were happy to find the older style was still available. This made me curious about games and I went in search of a book. What I found was It's All a Game: the History of Board Games from Monopoly to Settlers of Catan, by Tristan Donovan. What a find! We might all know that chess is an old game, but it changed depending on where it was played, who was ruling (take a guess at how the Queen got so much power), and has been banned several times, as recently as 2014. The first version of what became Monopoly was invented by a woman. 'Murder' was the original name for Cluedo ... better known as Clue in the U.S. One game was considered much too risque to sell well ... until Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor demonstrated Twister one night. Oh, and those new versions of Clue ... they were not well received and are no longer sold! ;-)

As much as I love reading while I eat, I am also very (very) picky about food around books, games, records, dvds, and so forth. I want easy to eat, 'tidy' snacks that I can eat with one hand ... so ... when I found a book that mentioned "mess-free" eating, I just had to investigate. That book was Gourmet Game Night: bite sized, mess-free eating for board-games parties, bridge clubs, poker nights, book groups, and more, by Cynthia Nims. Alas, these are beyond my capability as a (non) cook! Some of the recipes seem really complicated, but, that being said, I have several friends who are excellent in the kitchen and they would like this book, so you might, too! :-)

Reading Hermit With Dog