Beautiful Words Review – Bumfodder

Beautiful Words: A Celebration for Word Lovers (2023)
by Cider Mill Press

When a word power book includes words like breakfast, listen, October, newspaper and library I quickly fling it where it belongs: the trashcan.

After browsing through the book for about 30-minutes, I wondered if Beautiful Words: A Celebration for Word Lovers (2023) was churned out by an AI shop in South Sudan in five minutes.

In what world can October or newspaper be a beautiful word? They are the most commonplace words I can think of.

Now the aforesaid might seem like I’m jumping to a hasty conclusion.

It’s not merely the inclusion of mundane words that I object to.

Some words have only their literal meaning. For instance, snowflake: light, delicate flake of snow. But what about the word’s current popular meaning. In informal usage, snowflake is a term of derision often hurled by conservatives at liberals when they mean a person who is overly sensitive or easily offended.

A good word power book must provide all popular meanings of a word.

Some words have incomplete descriptions. For instance, the description for Marlin (p.128) suddenly stops in mid-sentence.

Sure, if I had followed my first instinct and trashed the book, I’d have missed out on learning new words like gouache (a type of watercolor painting), lanai (porch with a roof), gloaming (twilight), etc.

Also in the book’s favor, every word has the part of speech, the pronunciation and example of its usage.

There are a few Beautiful Words to keep word lover amused but on the whole this is not a book to linger over. There are plenty of better word power books around.

I’d not recommend spending $19.99 on this book.

If your library has it, take a deko at it.