When I was a teen, I used to write on bookmarks words I wanted to look up in the dictionary. Sometimes they were words I knew the general definition of but wanted to refresh myself as to the specifics of the definition. Other words I had never come across before. So I have a few of these bookmarks hanging around that are yellowed and faded with lists of words, some of them quite odd. You undoubtedly don't care but here is one such list.

perforce
seriatim
otiosity
emendations
eke
circumambient
docent
orichalchan
dehisces
haply
triremes
sepulcher
Thule
empery
novitiate
volutes
ambergris
recondite
thuribles
talc
cantraips
adumbration
deliquescent
bituminous

My guess is I picked up most of these from the books of Robert E. Howard, best known as the literary creator of Conan the Barbarian. He was a prolific pulp writer of fantasy in the 1920s and 1930s.

I went through a phase of reading almost everything written by everyone who contributed to the so-called Cthulhu Mythos started by H.P. Lovecraft and his circle of friends. Clark Ashton Smith was another author I was reading at the time.

I was not always the dour and serious blogger you see here (mostly). I read books with covers by Frank Frazetta like the one at left. Frazetta's paintings were full of brave, brawny hunks with small brains and women dressed in scraps of leather and metal which defied physics and gravity. Creatures of various types also inhabited the paintings. Note the gator plus tentacles and winged imps in the background.

I'm embarrassed by this history of my frivolous reading and the visual aid I've provided but them's the breaks. I've got a confessional mojo on at the moment.