Grammar Girl's 101 Words Every High School Graduate Needs to Know / Mignon Fogarty / 120 Pages

This short little book was a great refresher in the definitions of many words that you hear on the news but maybe are unsure of their exact meaning. Words you need to get by in life. Words that are good to know if you want to be engaged in an intellectual conversation. I was worried that maybe I wouldn't know the meanings of most of them, but am happy to say that there were only two words for which I was completely stumped on their definitions. Unlike a dictionary, this book defines the words with a paragraph or two of information, including the word's history, and then includes a quote to show you how the word is used. The quotes come from a wide variety of sources, from books including Gone With the Wind, Sense and Sensibility, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and from TV shows including Star Trek, House, and The Simpsons, among other things. It was a nice little book that was written well and was enjoyable. I will have to check out Grammar Girl's other books.