BOOKISHGAL

Today’s Wondrous Words are brought to you by the letter “K,” and by the books The Secret, The Know-it-All, and A Golden Age.

Wondrous Words Wednesday is hosted by Kathy at Bermudaonion’s Weblog. You take note of new words you’ve encountered in your reading during the previous week, and post about them, complete with definitions.

I didn’t encounter any this week, that I recall. But here are three that I ran into in three different books over the past while.

1) kappa - This was a cool word I learned in The Know-it-All by A.J. Jacobs, who wrote about his year of reading the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica. Here’s what he says about the word:

The strangest type of supernatural being I’ve encountered so far: a “vampirelike lecherous creature” from Japan that’s obsessed with cucumbers, resembles a monkey with fish scales, and refuses to lower its head for fear of spilling the magic water it keeps in the holes on top of its skull. I don’t know who came up with this, but I can almost guarantee those weren’t shiitake mushrooms he was eating.

2) kapp - This was from Beverly Lewis’s new novel (released yesterday!), The Secret, about an Amish family. This is clearly related to “cap,” because it’s the head covering worn by Amish women. Here are some examples at the Plain-n-Simple website (”Proclaim the plain & simple truth that you are a woman of God”). (Um…the Amish have internet access now? I’m clearly behind the times.)

[Note: there’s another picture of the “kapp” in the photo of the book, The Secret, that I review here.]

3) katha - This was from Tahmima Anam’s book, A Golden Age, published last year. The book was about the Bangladesh fight for independence from Pakistan in the 1970s, and one thing that was mentioned was that the women would take old saries and other cloth items and make them into blankets for the men who were fighting against the troops of Pakistan. The women would go up onto the roof of the house and make “kathas.” I’ve looked for information about this, but I’m still not sure what it refers to exactly. It may not be an actual garment or blanket, but it may refer to the type of sewing work used. I found links to this sort of work, one of them for this garment worn by a woman, and another for this tapestry. So “katha” may refer either to a type of design or a method of sewing. If anyone out there can give me more specific information about this, I’d love to know more.

And those are today’s helpings from the wonderful feast of words in our books. Happy reading!

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