all-purpose
When in doubt, buy them a gift card for a book store.
assurance
I half-expect an angry email. Instead I get concern, what sounds like a willingness to understand. I'm surprised. Years ago it would have been different. I wish I had possessed the confidence and faith to speak sooner.
clunky
Sitting on the floor gives me a strange perspective of the table and its unsteady piles of intermingled books, papers, notebooks, and journals. A water bottle looks like an alien totem, and the lamp towers solemnly over the laptop. Everything seems large and somewhat foolish, like children's toys meant to be tossed around and banged up.
curdled
No matter how many papers I go through, by the end of the day I'm no closer to having it figured out.
dovelike
The reading of the Book of Lamentations starts unexpectedly from a soft-spoken man at the back of the shul.
forbearing
About an hour before the fast ends, I start getting distracted with thoughts of food. My stomach isn't rumbling, but there's an odd clench to it, as if it's disgruntled but too polite to whine.
maquis
I feel like I should have learned about Nancy Wake prior to her death at age 98. She hasn't passed unnoticed, but she and others like her ought to be better known.
