Have you thought back to when you first became hooked on books? For me, it was the Babar series. A New York reader has mentioned The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Latin to English: flectere, flecto "to bend, bow, curve, turn around" fletch, fletcher, flex, flexible, flexibility, inflect, inflection, inflexion, reflect, reflective, reflectivity, reflex, reflexion, reflexive, reflexivity http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Dan_Polansky/English_derivations
de•flect Pronunciation: \di-ˈflekt, dē-\ verb
Etymology: Latin deflectere to bend down, turn aside, from de- + flectere to bend
Date: circa 1555
transitive verb : to turn aside especially from a straight course or fixed directionintransitive verb : to turn aside :
re•flect Pronunciation: \ri-ˈflekt\ verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin reflectere to bend back, from re- + flectere to bend Date: 15th century
transitive verb 1 archaic : to turn into or away from a course : DEFLECT
2 : to prevent passage of and cause to change direction a mirror reflects light
3 : to bend or fold back
4 : to give back or exhibit as an image, likeness, or outline : MIRROR
5 : to bring or cast as a result
6 : to make manifest or apparent : SHOW
7 : REALIZE, CONSIDERintransitive verb 1 : to throw back light or sound
2 a : to think quietly and calmly b : to express a thought or opinion resulting from reflection
3 a : to tend to bring reproach or discredit b : to bring about a specified appearance or characterization c : to have a bearing or influence
www.m-w.com

They've survived centuries of hurricanes and blizzards, generations of births and deaths. Originally designed and built by early English colonists, the Cape Cod-style home has endured long enough to become an icon in the annals of architecture. Some who live in 17th- and 18th-century originals say you never really own a Cape Cod-style home—you are there to preserve it for the next generation. And some who have lived in the more contemporary version—there was an explosion of Cape Cod-style homes built in the 1930s through 1950s—say it would be hard to design a more efficient house for raising a family. The term "Cape Cod House" was the invention of Timothy Dwight, a Congregationalist minister and president of Yale University from 1785 to 1817, according to "A Book of Cape Cod Houses," by Doris Doane and the Web site aboutarchitecture.com. See specifications and picture at: http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091101/LIFE/911010308/-1/NEWSMAP

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
From: Steve Fulton (cerberus40 hotmail.com)
Subject: (Re: Byronic) Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage in Comics
Def: melancholic, passionate, and melodramatic, and having disregard for societal norms.\
In the notes for Byronic, you mention that Lord Byron's daughter, Ada Lovelace, was the first computer programmer, and she wrote programs for Charles Babbage's analytical engine. If you are interested in Lovelace and Babbage, you should check out Sydney Padua's 2D Goggles: Dangerous Experiments in Comics. It purports to be a steampunky comic with Babbage and Lovelace fighting crime using Victorian science and mathematics, but about 80% of the content is Sydney explaining the actual history behind the stories.
From: Robert Payne (dziga68 sbcglobal.net)
Subject: Orwellian
My primary understanding of the word 'Orwellian' is to describe when benign or ameliorative language is used to obfuscate motives or effects, particularly those relating to a government, that may be considered less than benign; to call something potentially threatening other than what it ostensibly is in order to make it seem less threatening. I think that the titles of some laws enacted in recent years by Congress have been given Orwellian names in order to befog understanding of what the laws actually entail. The USA PATRIOT Act, which curtailed some domestic liberties, is one such law, making it appear that if you didn't support these infringements, you were unpatriotic.
From: Bob Lee (jandrlee shaw.ca)
Subject: Machiavelli
I don't think you are entirely fair in the description of Il Principe (given below). Craft, yes, deceit if necessary, but pragmatic sense always. If kindness and honesty will do the job, Machiavelli advises that direction. His book is intensely practical, tailoring behavior to the nature of the people you deal with. If they are crafty and deceitful, his advice is to fight fire with fire. The Prince, a political treatise describing the use of craft and deceit to achieve political power.

American English is slowly changing; across the nation, the two "low-back" vowel sounds in these words are merging, region by region. Now Christina Esposito of Macalester College has tracked the change sweeping eastwards across the Midwest into Minnesota. She will present her findings at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) next week in San Antonio, TX. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091026152814.htm

The 1,180-foot-long Oasis, the world’s largest passenger ship, has embarked on a journey to her home port of Fort Lauderdale in Florida for a naming ceremony. The £855 million pounds, 20-storey vessel, which is five-times the size of Titanic, accommodates 6,360 passengers, contains 21 swimming pools and is equipped with an indoor park with growing trees and a theatre the size of a football pitch. On Sunday night it passed under the Great Belt Bridge, which connects the Danish islands of Zealand and Funen with just a 2ft clearance after lowering its telescopic smokestacks. See picture and story at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6488496/Worlds-largest-passenger-ship-sets-sail---with-a-squeeze.html

On November 3, 1884, the US Supreme Court ruled in Elk v. Wilkins that John Elk, an Indian who had tried to vote in a federal election in Omaha, Nebraska, was not a US citizen entitled to the protection of the 14th and 15th Amendments of the US Constitution. Native Americans became eligible for citizenship in 1887 under the Dawes Act, but only in 1924, under the Indian Citizenship Act, were all Native Americans born in the US made citizens. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/

November 3 is the birthday of William Cullen Bryant, (books by this author) born in Cummington, Massachusetts (1794), who worked as a lawyer, hated it, wrote a history of world civilization in verse while still working as a lawyer in his 20s, quit his attorney job, became a journalist, and edited the New York Evening Post for 50 years, during which time he promoted unions, condemned slavery, and advocated for a Central Park in nascent New York City. Bryant Park next to the New York Public Library is named for him. The Writer’s Almanac