Leisure reading

Compiled by Aaron Peckham

Andrews McMeel Publishing, $12.95.

An "egret" is a message of regret sent by e-mail. Maybe you already knew that. If not, you are probably middle-age, in which case you are sure to know what "eat crow" means. ("Make a mistake and acknowledge it, humbly.")

"Cosplay" means "costume play," as in when you dress up like some character from science fiction. If you don't know that expression, you probably do know "basket case." (It means "unable to deal with stress.")

What you learn from the "Urban Dictionary," compiled by Aaron Peckham, may just depend on your age. In theory, all age groups could benefit from this little guide, but if you are young and savvy and were raised on the slang of an earlier era, you probably know every definition in this book.

The "Urban Dictionary" comes at slang from two angles. It lists a variety of modern terms — mostly about drugs and sex — and also includes overused sayings from the past.

'If Life Were Easy, It Wouldn't Be Hard'

By Sheri Dew

Deseret Book, $16.95.

Sheri Dew's name is well-known in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a former member of the General Relief Society presidency and from her biographies of church Presidents Gordon B. Hinckley and Ezra Taft Benson.

Dew, the CEO of Deseret Book, also writes books of inspiration for everyday living —the stiff-upper-lip genre.

Using a strong religious vocabulary, Dew quotes scripture and discusses "carrying burdens — not baggage," charity, the importance of change, chastity, power for women in the form of "purity" and the tendency people have to "make life harder than it needs to be."

The chapter on women could have been extracted from a 19th-century American tract, an era when women were expected to do nothing except things domestic. This was before the women's movement, which eventually led to women getting the right to vote.