Language is enriched by people who don't speak it very well, using phrases made up of words that contain the meaning of what they want to say but not the usual form. The result is sometimes quite effective. How about this one reporting a break in the summer heat: The weather is going down a bit, or this: Be sure to hear for it, while what he should have said was to listen for it. A language should never be stagnant, and what we smile at today often becomes accepted in the future. Gradually usage goes up a bit; be sure to hear for it.

Today, we will be reading for it. Not long ago I told you of a first novel by Japan-based Dianne Highbridge, "A Much Younger Man," now available in a softcover edition. It is a story that shows a love affair between an older person and a much younger one does not always have to cast a girl-child in the youthful role and a man as her much older lover, and that unconventional situations can develop in unexpected ways. Now, a second book by the same author has been released, this one involving foreigners, mostly women, in Japan. How well she knows this country and how sensitively she places her characters in it. It has already received favorable reviews including one in The New York Times, which it well deserves. Each reader must find his/her interpretation of the title, "In the Empire of Dreams." Often I would think, "That's exactly how I feel about it," but I wouldn't have known how to write it so well. You may share this feeling when you read about cherry blossoms -- "How could she have known, before she saw them the first time, what they would be like? She supposed they were just for tourists, that all the glossy photos she'd seen in guidebooks would have turned out to be a half a dozen famous trees somewhere. How could she have known the way the blossoms creep slowly up toward Tokyo, following the warmth, how the pink arrows of the blossom front move from day to day across the weather map, how the buds begin to open and everyone starts to calculate, 'Half open today, maybe full bloom Thursday, we could have our party Friday night.' " There is more, and you should read it. I liked the way people came and left and maybe came back again in the loosely connected stories, just like life. I liked that it was mostly about women, though not obsessively so. I sometimes saw myself in these stories, but it was never really me, only a reflection of something I once did or thought. Highbridge should feel very good about this book, and I think you will too when you read it. (Published by Soho Press, ISBN 1-56947-146-0)

Our next book, "Goddesses," is also about women, a celebration of US. There we are, created by artist Mayumi Oda. Oda's goddesses are lovely, rounded, playful, they assume many roles. In this delightful book, the artist introduces her goddesses alongside the color reproductions of her silkscreen prints. She tells us, too, how she never stopped drawing after receiving her first set of crayons in the difficult days just after the war, and how colors continue to cast a spell over her. And so do flowers, the seas, whimsy, music, playfulness and joy. Tears? Not in this book. Those are more likely associated with her other work, promoting protection of our environment and opposition to nuclear penetration of our world. For a while she gave up painting altogether to work for the causes she believes in.