New Book in the Mail

Today the mailbox divulged its secrets and voila!, a book I ordered from Amazon was inside.  I love days like this!  It's not a real exciting book except to someone like me who loves the written word.

OK, the picture is not the greatest, but there is enough information.

A Handbook to Literature is a "dictionary-style supplement for anyone's personal or professional library".  I was not really sure what to expect , not having ever seen this book before.  But, I know from now on, it will always be near at hand.  Why?  Well, because of entries like this, on page 185:

Exergue  Originally a small space on a coin, medal, or other such artifact.  The exergue is set apart for a minor inscription.  The term is also used for a set of epigraph-like quotations near the beginning of Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology (tr. 1976).

A real reader is bound to come across a word like exergue and think "what the heck is that?".   Not a problem now!  But, the greater use of this book is as a reference for terms used in the study of English Literature.