It's never dreich in LA

The BBC promotes an interesting book in today's Magazine: The Meaning of Tingo (author's website here). His latest blog entry would bring a wee smile to the face of most Scots:

... Scottish weather words I found, most of them, unsurprisingly, to do with rain. Dreich, ‘a miserably wet day’; plowtery, meaning ‘showery’; and drookit, ‘soaked to the skin’.

Most of the Scottish words I know are related to the weather, closely followed by words about drink or being drunk... Now what does that say about me, or the state of Scotland? (Not 100% sure, not being a true Scot, but plowtery may be pronounced "ploootery", and drookit as "dreekit". Don't quote me on that...)

The book is available for pre-order on Amazon.com and .co.uk... I think it qualifies under my new strict guidelines for buying books. i.e. I have to want to ship it back to the UK when I'm done here. That's probably been the hardest thing to resist over here, especially since I live very close to a good secondhand bookshop.

Speaking of bookshops, tucked between many trendy restaurants in Westwood is a murder/mystery/crime specialist bookshop. I wandered in last week out of curiosity, as I'm not a huge fan of crime novels. Not recognising any works or authors on the tables, I went off in search for Ian Rankin's books. Different covers. For some reason, publishers think that British and American readers have different preferences for cover art. Same thing with Terry Pratchett's novels; they lack both Kirby's and Kidby's paintings.

Edit: Just thought to check if the bookshop has a website. Turns out they have a blog. They sure arrange a lot of signings.