Narnia.

We're reading The Chronicles of Narnia for the first time.  We've seen the movies, but none of us has read them before this.  At first, we checked out the audio CDs, but it was one big set and it was 31 disks and we couldn't listen to it all before it was due back at the library so then I started reading.  This has lead to some laughter because there are certain words that I just cannot, for the life of me, pronounce, such as usurper and bivouac.   Now whenever I see the word bivouac in the text, I say camped, which seems to be the meaning.  Another word that confused us greatly was the use of the word carbuncle as in this quote:   "Natural affection is stronger than soup and offspring more precious than carbuncles".  I'm not sure about the part about the soup (strong soup?) but I as a medical transcriptionist, I was really confused by the use of the word carbuncle as something precious.  Here's the meaning in my medical dictionary (and in my head).  Carbuncle:  a painful local purulent inflammation of the skin and deeper tissues with multiple openings for the discharge of pus and usually necrosis and sloughing of dead tissue.  The first night I read this word, I was very confused.   I had my older son google it since he was sitting at the computer.  Same definition.  Finally today I looked on Dictonary.com and found this definition.

Carbuncle:  

–noun

1.

Pathology . a painful circumscribed inflammation of the subcutaneous tissue, resulting in suppuration and sloughing, and having a tendency to spread somewhat like a boil, but more serious in its effects.

2.

a gemstone, esp. a garnet, cut with a convex back and a cabochon surface.

3.

Also called London brown. a dark grayish, red-brown color.

4.

Obsolete . any rounded red gem.

Much better.  Now I can, hopefully, picture a round, red gem such as a garnet when I'm reading the next part.  We're reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader now and it is clearing up some parts of the movies that I didn't understand.  I'm still not sure how I feel about the series as a whole or if I'll ever want to read any of them again but I am glad we finally undertook reading them at least once.