Today's word brought to us by Patricia Cornwell and her book "Book of the Dead."
Oedipal: of, relating to, or resulting from the Oedipus complex.
What, do you ask, is the Oedipus complex? Well let's look that up too.
Oedipus complex: Greek mythological character. In Greek mythology Oedipus was the son of Laius and Jocasta, the king and queen of Thebes. Because at his birth an oracle had predicted that he would someday murder his father and marry his mother, Oedipus was abandoned by his parents, but he survived to maturity. Through a highly improbable series of circumstances, he fulfilled the prophecy: he unknowingly slew his father and later married his widowed mother, thereby succeeding his father to the throne. When the truth was eventually revealed to all, Jocasta committed suicide and Oedipus blinded himself.
Well now doesn't that sound lovely?
In the book they were talking about one of the male characters and his obsession with an older female character. If you're a fan of Patricia Cornwell and the Scarpetta series then you will probably like this book. I've read most all the the Cornwell books including the non-fiction one about Jack the Ripper and "Book of the Dead is about average for her books. I wouldn't recommend paying full price for it, find it at the library or a used book store. It's not worth full price.
When I read the word the first thing I thought of was Scrabble, I'm always looking for words for that game. I've started a little notebook with words I find in books and/or games I've played. I really like it that you can archive your previous games, it gives ya a chance to look at all the words that have been played. Funny how just like in crossword puzzles we repeat a lot of the same words. I'm still trying to figure out how someone can score over 3000 points in Scrabble, I haven't even broken 500 yet!
Anyway, this brings me to something else I've been thinking about. I read a lot of books and have several friends who I trade with. What I've been thinking is that I'd like to start a book club. Not a regular run of the mill book club but one where we don't all read the same book at the same time, we meet maybe once a month and each person gives a review on the book they've most recently read. We each bring our book to the meeting and we can exchange with each other. Eventually we will all have read the books and can discuss what we think of them. The more I think of it, maybe it should be a book exchange group. We meet once a month, chat about books we've read or are reading and bring along books to exchange. We could also do brunch or something. Yeah, I'm liking this. I think I'll send out a message and see if I get any response. I'm thinking Friday mornings. I know a lot of people work on Fridays but I also know a lot of people who don't. Plus a number of friends are school teachers and they have the Summer off. It doesn't have to be the same group of people each month, just whoever can show up. Boy could I come up with an eclectic group of book readers.
The Friday Book Brunch, I like the sound of it...
