Monday, November 02, 2009

Flap a Day


The book flap I skimmed for today is from the READER'S DIGEST ILLUSTRATED DICTIONARY OF BIBLE LIFE & TIMES, and gosh is it a dilly! It starts off - STARTS OFF, mind you! - like this: "What are 'screamers' and 'twitterers'?" So naturally right off the bat that makes you wonder if Twitter was predicted in the Bible. In other words, the first sentence on the flap is a question that tricks you into opening the book (just like I did because of the last flap). In this case, then, I didn't even SKIM the flap, really! I just read the first sentence and it was too much to handle. Oh, flaps! Sometimes I think you do your job too well. And yes, I say "tricks," because there is no entry for "twitterer" in the READER'S DIGEST ILLUSTRATED DICTIONARY OF BIBLE LIFE & TIMES (the last thing under "T" is "turban")! Nor does "twitterer" appear in the index OR the glossary. According to the READER'S DIGEST ILLUSTRATED DICTIONARY OF BIBLE LIFE & TIMES, "Turbans were formed by winding strips of cloth around the head." Duh! Thanks for nothing, READER'S DIGEST ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF BIBLE LIFE & TIMES. And as for screamers, if I am recalling the science fiction movie SCREAMERS correctly, they are these sentient little round machines on another planet and they pop up out of the dirt and cut you.