Erudite

Word of the Day Saturday, March 13, 2010

erudite

\AIR-yuh-dyt; -uh-dyt\ , adjective;

1. Characterized by extensive reading or knowledge; learned.

She had been immensely intimidated by the large library he kept just off of the living room. Floor to ceiling book shelves lined every wall, a large sunken leather chair the only piece of furniture in the room other than the reading lamp.

"Is this a collection? Or do you read all of these?" she asked gesturing towards all the books.

He glanced towards where she was pointing, "Oh, all the books? I suppose you can call it a collection, I don't really like getting rid of books. Maybe obsession would be a better word than collection," he said with a smile, "But I have read almost everything in there. I have a stack over here that I'm waiting to get to."

She stared again at the room full of books.

"What do you do that you have time to read all of those?" she asked.

He frowned slightly, "Well, some of them, like this one," he said walking over to one shelf full of worn paperback books, the spines heavily creased, "These are science fiction from when I was a kid. So, I guess when you consider that this represents a good 30 years worth of reading, it actually seems kind of small. Don't you think?"

She smiled, "Yeah, I guess when you put it that way it makes sense."

She gently brushed her hand against a shelf of books, a pang of jealously at his effortless eruditeness. She had felt out of her league all night long, like she was swimming in deep, choppy water and could barely keep her head from going under.

"Do you have any books on fashion?" she asked immediately regretting the request.

To her surprise his eyes lit up with enthusiasm. "It is sort of a photography book, but there are a lot of fashion icons used as the subjects. But really, in a lot of ways the clothing makes as much of an impact in the photo as the faces of the model," he said plucking a large hardcover book off of the shelf and sitting down in the leather chair.

She relaxed slightly deciding that maybe the best part about this guy was the fact that he kept trying to bridge the gaps between them.