The 6 greatest A Christmas Carol adaptations by Robert Keeling   Charles Dickens’ tale was his reaction to the relatively new issue of urban poverty and was a warning against cold-hearted attitudes towards the problem.  Read descriptions of the author's favorite A Christmas Carol films from 1938, 1951, 1971, 1983, 1984 and 1992 at http://metro.co.uk/2016/12/19/the-6-greatest-a-christmas-carol-adaptations-6297138/#mv-a

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From:  Denny Beck  Subject:  Crepuscular  In the 1950s a small library on wheels called a bookmobile visited our grade school monthly.  Because our home was in a small enclave surrounded by undeveloped fields and forests, I became fascinated with nature, including the sky.  I eventually read every bookmobile book about astronomy and meteorology.  That’s how I learned crepuscular rays were those inspirational rays beaming down from clouds like a scene from a Renaissance painting.  Anti-crepuscular rays beam up.

From:  Gordon Tully  Subject:  Crepuscular  The terms for times around sunrise and sunset never fail to confuse me.  There are three twilights:  civil, nautical and astronomical, in which the sun is 6, 12, and 18 degrees below the horizon respectively.

From:  Buddy Gill  Subject:  degustation  The word degustation reminds me of the Latin adage “De gustibus non est disputandum”, which my mother explained with the wellerism:  “Everyone to his own taste, as the old lady said when she kissed the cow.”

wellerism  (WEL-uh-ri-zuhm)  noun  An expression involving a familiar proverb or quotation and its facetious sequel.  It usually comprises three parts:  statement, speaker, situation.  Examples:  "We'll have to rehearse that," said the undertaker as the coffin fell out of the car.  "Prevention is better than cure," said the pig when it ran away from the butcher.  After Sam Weller and his father, characters known for such utterances in Charles Dickens's novel Pickwick Papers.  Earliest documented use:  1839.  http://wordsmith.org/words/wellerism.html

Humblebrags have probably existed for a while, but we know to call them that only because of Harris Wittels.  Wittels, a comedian, writes for NBC comedy Parks and Recreation.  Wittels’s coinage has evolved into a sociological achievement:  It bridges the gap between bragging and false modesty.  The humblebrag is even real enough to crop up in fiction.  In Tom Rachman’s novel The Imperfectionists, a cub reporter picks up an egomaniacal older journalist, Snyder, at a Cairo airport:  “Wicked to be back in the Mideast,” Snyder says.  “I am so exhausted, you have no idea.  Just got back from the AIDS conf.”  “The AIDS what?”  “The AIDS conference in Bucharest.  It’s so dumb—I hate getting awards.  And journalism is not a competition.  It’s not about that, you know.  But whatever."  If you made a Venn diagram of self-promotion, the phenomenon of humblebragging sits in the overlap of two distinctly American pathologies—where manipulative self-consciousness meets our maniacal desire to succeed. What feels better than an ego boost?  An ego boost everyone knows about.  http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/consider-the-humblebrag/

Read extensive articles and see beautiful pictures of bookstores:  Guide for Bookstore Pilgrims by Ann Patchett at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/travel/an-international-bookstore-guide.html  and Temples for the Literary Pilgrim by The New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/travel/temples-for-the-literary-pilgrim.html

It was my first dinner party in France and I was chatting with a Parisian couple.  All was well until I asked what I thought was a perfectly innocent question:  “How did the two of you meet?”  My husband Eric (who is French) shot me a look of horror.  When we got home he explained:  “We don’t ask that type of question to strangers in France.  It’s like asking them the color of their underpants.”  It’s a classic mistake.  One of the first things you notice when arriving in a new culture is that the rules about what information is and is not appropriate to ask and share with strangers are different.  Understanding those rules, however, is a prerequisite for succeeding in that new culture; simply applying your own rules gets you into hot water pretty quickly.  A good way to prepare is to ask yourself whether the new culture is a “peach” or a “coconut”.  This is a distinction drawn by culture experts Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner.  In peach cultures like the USA or Brazil people tend to be friendly (“soft”) with new acquaintances.  They smile frequently at strangers, move quickly to first-name usage, share information about themselves, and ask personal questions of those they hardly know.  But after a little friendly interaction with a peach, you may suddenly get to the hard shell of the pit where the peach protects his real self and the relationship suddenly stops.  In coconut cultures such Russia and Germany, people are initially more closed off from those they don’t have friendships with.  They rarely smile at strangers, ask casual acquaintances personal questions, or offer personal information to those they don’t know intimately.  But over time, as coconuts get to know you, they become gradually warmer and friendlier.  And while relationships are built up slowly, they also tend to last longer.  Coming from a peach culture as I do, I was taken aback when I came to live in Europe 14 years ago.  My friendly smiles and personal comments were greeted with cold formality by the Polish, French, German, or Russian colleagues I was getting to know.  I took their stony expressions as signs of arrogance, snobbishness, and even hostility.  So what do you do if, like me, you’re a peach fallen amongst coconuts?  Authenticity matters; if you try to be someone you’re not, it never works.  So go ahead and smile all you want and share as much information about your family as you like.  Just don’t ask personal questions of your counterparts until they bring up the subject themselves.  Erin Meyer  https://hbr.org/2014/05/one-reason-cross-cultural-small-talk-is-so-tricky

In reading a novel set in 1930, "head honcho" and Reader's Digest Condensed Books were mentioned.  However, honcho was not used until the 1940s by Americans, and the condensed books produced by Reader's Digest started in 1950.

The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. is a worldwide publisher and distributor of magazines, books, recorded music, and home video packages, which are sold through a variety of distribution channels, including direct mail, display marketing, direct response television, catalogs, retail, and the Internet.  Its major publication is the monthly general-interest magazine Reader's Digest, which is the world's most widely read magazine with a global readership of more than 100 million, and is available in 48 editions and 19 languages.  The company also publishes numerous special-interest magazines and books that include do-it-yourself, cooking, health, gardening, and children's titles.  To market its many products, the Reader's Digest Association uses an extensive consumer database that is considered to be one of the largest in the world.  The first edition of Reader's Digest was dated February 1922, and contained 64 pages.  Its small measurements, about 5.5 inches by 7.5 inches, allowed readers to carry it in a pocket or purse and was a unique innovation among magazines at the time.  The lead article was by Alexander Graham Bell and was on the importance of self-education as a lifelong habit.  DeWitt Wallace spent much of the magazine's first year in the New York Public Library reading articles to summarize in future issues, while Lila Wallace kept her job.  The first edition was judged to be a success when there were no cancellations of subscriptions after its release.  By September 1922, the couple was able to rent a garage and apartment for their editorial offices, choosing to live in Pleasantville, New York, where they had been married in 1921.  Additional promotional letters brought in new subscribers, and within a year of its first edition, circulation had risen to 7,000.  After four years, circulation was up to 20,000, and by 1929 it had risen to an astounding 216,000 subscribers.  Read much more at http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/the-reader-s-digest-association-inc-history/

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a "honcho" as "[o]riginally, the leader of a small group or squad; hence, anyone in charge in any situation; the 'boss.' "  Merriam-Webster goes a bit further into the etymology of the word, noting that it comes from the Japanese word "han" (which means squad) and chō (which is defined as head or chief).  According to Fighting Talk: The Military Origins of Everyday Words and Phrases, the Japanese army would call squad leaders or sergeants in the army "hon-cho."  The first published references to the word came in 1947, when New Zealand-born journalist James M. Bertram used it in his book The Shadow of a War:  A New Zealander in the Far East, 1939-1946.  While Bertram's memoir was written in 1947, there are several indications that the word "honcho" had been used by soldiers and other military personnel for years before that.  Lakshmi Gandhi   http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/10/29/241384302/talk-to-the-head-honcho-he-speaks-japanese  See also http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/01/23/you-might-be-surprised-to-learn-that-these-english-words-were-originally-japanese/

LexisNexis® announced on December 20, 2016 that it will retire its online legal research service, lexis.com®, changing U.S. legal professionals to the company’s Lexis Advance® solution.

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1669  December 26, 2016  On this date in 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie announced the isolation of radium.  On this date in 1963, the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "I Saw Her Standing There" were released in the United States, marking the beginning of Beatlemania on an international level.  Word of the Day  Boxing Day  noun  The day after Christmas; the 26th of December.