This blog offers a different type of book review­—one that’s combined with vocabulary building. Included here, following a short review, are a few interesting words I found The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind by Jackson Ford.

I read this book hoping to attend Ford’s visit to our local library. I missed the visit but enjoyed the book just the same. 

The book’s plot is sci fi and thriller skillfully combined to pull you along as you feel the main character, Teagan Frost, a psychokinetic working for a secret government team of experts in handling extreme situations, search for some sort of normalcy in her strange world.

The book is set in L.A. but written by an English author who had never been there. It makes for some interesting twists in spelling. Words like tyres and cheque and authorised were a little unexpected in spelling for a novel set in the states, but added to the fun read for me.   

The following includes just a few words from The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind that are important to the book, that I found interesting, or words used in an interesting way:

Psychokinetic/Psychokinesis: noun. Plural. The supposed ability to move objects by mental effort alone. (psychokinetic: adj.)

The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind, Page 1:  “Pro tip: if you’re going to take a high dive off the 82^nd floor, make sure you do it with a psychokinetic holding your hand.”

Pugnacious: adjective. Eager or quick to argue, quarrel or fight.

The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind, Page 392:  “It’s a pugnacious, almost childish look: a look that says I know what I’m doing, and you couldn’t possibly understand. It’s raw, boiling arrogance.”

Rebar: noun. A steel reinforcing rod in concrete.

The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind, Page 93:  “It’s a piece of steel reinforcement bar—what house builders call rebar. It’s tough to see because it’s almost buried, twisted like it was nothing more than a length of wire. It wraps around his throat three times, dug in so deep that it’s almost decapitated him. 

Clusterfuck: noun. A disastrously mishandled situation or undertaking.

 Definitions are typically from the dictionary that comes with my Mac or The New Oxford American Dictionary.

“The word is only a representation of the meaning; even at its best, writing almost always falls short of full meaning. Given that, why in God’s name would you want to make things worse by choosing a word which is only cousin to the one you really wanted to use?” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft