Today the New Oxford American Dictionary, part of Oxford University Press USA, announced its choice for Word of the Year: unfriend. According to Oxford, unfriend is a verb that means, “To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”
While the word certainly has a new meaning, it’s not really a new word. In fact, when searching the Oxford English Dictionary Online, references will be found for the verb “unfriend” back in the 17th century — well before the Facebook era. Other words in the running for this year’s top word included birther, green state, deleb, hashtag, intexticated, funemployed and netbook. If you’re wondering what any of those means, check out this blog post by Oxford.
If you’re ever curious about the development of a word or phrase, give the Oxford English Dictionary Online a try; this authoritative source tracks the history and usage of the English language.
Is there really such thing as a 
Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century–1951–in the middle of the United States–Des Moines, Iowa–in the middle of the largest generation in American history–the baby boomers. As one of the funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his all-American childhood for memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero . . . 
A tale reminiscent of “Hamlet” that also celebrates the alliance between humans and dogs follows speech-disabled Wisconsin youth Edgar, who bonds with three yearling canines and struggles to prove that his sinister uncle is responsible for his father’s death.
Two families awaiting the arrival of their adopted infant daughters from Korea meet at the airport. The families lives become interwined after the Donaldsons, a young American couple invite the Yazdan’s, Maryam, her son and his Iranian American wife 
As London is emerging from the shadow of World War II, writer Juliet Ashton discovers her next subject in a book club on Guernsey–a club born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi after its members are discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island.
The Rope Walk brings us the dazzling story of a pivotal summer in the life of Alice, a redheaded tomboy and motherless girl who is beloved and protected by her five older brothers and her widower father, a professor of Shakespeare. On Memorial Day, at her tenth birthday party in the garden of her Vermont village home, Alice meets two people unlike any she’s known before. Theo is a mixed-race New York City kid visiting his white grandparents for the summer. Kenneth is a cosmopolitan artist with AIDS who has come home to convalesce with his middle-aged sister . . . 
Karen Armstrong begins this spellbinding story of her spiritual journey with her departure in 1969 from the Roman Catholic convent she had entered seven years before—hoping, but ultimately failing, to find God. She knew almost nothing of the changed world to which she was returning, and she was tormented by panic attacks and inexplicable seizures . . . 
The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the 
Despite being a straight-A student and voracious reader, nine-year-old Sandrine Miller is treated like a servant by her mother, who forces Sandrine to clean house, do chores and take care of her younger stepsister, Yolanda. On top of the despair of her life, Sandrine must confront the harshness of life in mid-1970s New Orleans, where older men prey on young girls and she is ostracized because she is a light-skinned black girl . . . 
