w00t w00t w00t

Merriam-Webster Dictionary picked "w00t" as their word of the year. W00t is usually repeated in triplicate with fist pumped in the air as an expression of victory. First used by online gamers, this expression was immediately recognized by my 1990s vintage offspring, but Dan and I remained befuddled until we saw them demonstrate as
described above. It's what young folks say today instead of "hooray" and "huzzah", I suppose. This could be a sign of the text-messaging takeover of modern spelling and usage. idk. I am not LOL. Reuters has the in-depth scoop here.

For more than you perhaps would ever want to know about "w00t" and other waves of our language future, known as "leetspeak" you can check out The Lexicographer's Rules blog.

As for me, I think Merriam-Webster should have gone with runner-up word "blamestorm", defined as a group meeting where everyone is finger pointing. So much more visually expressive.

w00t w00t w00t!

Your BFF Rachel

Book Trout Lives Under Rock

The Book Trout apparently lives under a rock, because it was news to me when I read in the newspaper recently that "The Education of Little Tree" by Forrest Carter is not a fictionalized memoir of a Cherokee Indian's boyhood but a tale spun out of wholecloth by a white KKK kook and George Wallace speechwriter. The book showed up on an Oprah website suggested reading list and was summarily ejected when this was pointed out publicly. To her credit, Oprah had, in 1994, talked about her ambivalence about the book after hearing about Carter's wacko past and discussed ow she removed it from her personal bookshelves, unable to reconcile its beautiful spirituality with the ugliness of its racist author.

I somehow missed this whole brouhaha when it was revealed not long after the book won the first ABBY Award, bestowed by the American Booksellers Award for literary gems most beloved by independent booksellers. Although I have not read the book myself, I had many customers who raved about what a poignant story it is and so I would pick up copies when I was out book scouting because of its popularity and its presence on many a high school reading list. There are at least two book buddies who will be crestfallen when I let them in on its Hall of Shame provenance.

A far better Native American coming of age story would seem to be Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian", which yesterday won a National Book Award. It is a semi-autobiographical young adult novel, following the path of a young Native American hydrocephalic teen, who decides to leave his family and Reservation to seek education and challenges in the white world. The Seattle Times has a great article here about Alexie's book.



Alexie, incidentally, was quoted by the Associated Press after the Oprah website incident as saying

"'Little Tree' is a lovely little book, and I sometimes wonder if it is an act of romantic atonement by a guilt-ridden white supremacist, but ultimately I think it is the racial hypocrisy of a white supremacist,"

.

A Wrecking Ball of a Day

After three hot and hazy summer days, it's climbed to over one hundred degrees here today with accompanying fug and nasty tempers all around. The bookstore is closed today (we're closed Mondays and Tuesdays and February) and there's only one measly book order from the Internet, so I've got hot cross buns too. The fact that my teenage daughter is pestering me to allow her to pierce her septum
and the tween daughter just hosted two of her giggliest buddies for a sleepover which had nothing to do with sleep only adds to my grump index. The gigglers secreted in two cans of "Rock Star", a diabolical energy drink which to my relief does not contain heroin and rock cocaine, but merely unspeakable amounts of sugar, caffeine and gingseng extract. While they did not trash guitars around the house all night, they did repeatedly wake everyone else up.

I am trying to keep things in perspective. The shot above of a wrecking ball on the loose at Allegheny College today diminishes my inner gremlin. I see glimpses of hope for my currently insane offspring. There's boxes of wonderful recently-acquired history books to price and shelve tomorrow, which will require me to nip into the 65 degree bookstore basement on a constant basis. And the peas are ready for picking in the garden, so until tomorrow....