A Progress Report & Some Vocabulary

Well, y'all, it's the very last day of November. Can you even believe it? Christmastime is officially here. Cody and I are busting out all the red and green decorations we can find today, and my Christmas cards are all addressed and waiting for me to go buy cute Christmas stamps so they can fly all over the world to people I love. I thought it fitting on this the last day of November to pop in here and say hi. November has been my worst blogging month yet, though to be fair, I did warn you that the posts would be getting more sparse through the end of the year.

Anyway, I am still hung-up on Theodore, and truth be told, I haven't read so much as two pages of it since we've been back from North Carolina. But I am determined to finish him off by the end of this year. I am currently on page 587 out of 816 pages. This book is as big as my head.

See. I'm not even kidding. It's like a textbook. 

While I was making serious headway on this beast during vacation, I jotted down a few unfamiliar words I came across, and I thought I'd broaden your vocabulary today before we head into the most wonderful time of the year.

Our first word is bellicose.

bellicose (adjective): demonstrating aggression and willingness to fight; hostile

This word jumped out at me on page 466, and since then I've noticed it several more times which makes me wonder if page 466 wasn't the first place it made an appearance. Theodore Roosevelt was certainly a bellicose man, so it's definitely an accurate descriptor. 

Our other word today is imbroglio. Isn't that just fun to say?

imbroglio (noun): an extremely confused, complicated, or embarrassing situation

I came across this word at the top of page 582, and it was actually within a quote from Roosevelt himself referencing a mess he was in with Japan during his second term as President. I think it's a super-fun word, and really, why don't we use words like imbroglio anymore?

So there you have it. Two new words and a little update on my progress in TR. Are you trying to finish any hard books by the end of this year? How about any fun ones? Had you ever heard the words bellicose or imbroglio before today?