I found Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid a captivating read. The book is filled with tension that carries until the very last page, fantastic detail about the space program, and a super sweet love story.  

In this blog I offer a different type of book review­—one that’s combined with vocabulary building. In Atmosphere I tried to stay away from the scientific terms and found other interesting choices.

From Atmosphere:

“My dad taught me when I was little. Bravery is being unafraid of something other people are afraid of. Courage is being afraid, but strong enough to do it anyway.”

bravery: noun, courageous behavior or character

courage: noun, the ability to do something that frightens one, strength in the face of pain or grief

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From Atmosphere:

You could develop your personality your entire life—pursue the things you wanted to learn, discover the most interesting parts of yourself, hold yourself to a certain standard—and then you marry a man and suddenly his personality, his wants, his standards subsume your own?

subsume: verb, include or absorb (something) in something else

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From Atmosphere:

The parabolas, when executed properly, simulated microgravity.

parabolas: noun, a symmetrical open plane curve formed by the intersection of a cone with a plane parallel to its side. The path of a projectile under the influence of gravity ideally follows a curve of this shape.

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From Atmosphere:

“No, nothing’s funny. It’s just … you’re so … dauntless.”

dauntless: adjective, showing fearlessness and determination

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What interesting words or terms have you found in your recent reading?

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To connect or learn more about Taylor Jenkins Reid and her books, find her at taylorjenkinsreid.com

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

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“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