He documented moments that slipped somewhere between the iconic and the commonplace, made vivid by their unexpected familiarity.
The observation was consistent with Beard's presentation of the ancient world: how the ancients relieved themselves is a recurring theme in her popular work, providing a vivid means of conveying familiarity and difference.
He is particularly good at evoking Kate's traumatic existence as an enemy alien, and his familiarity with Tuscany shines through with vivid descriptions of local landscape, architecture and, of course, food and drink.
Her first two albums established her as a premier chronicler of small-town adolescence, a songwriter who could bring well-worn scenarios to vivid life without ever losing the value of their familiarity.
Those whose familiarity with Oliver Sacks extends only to his vivid book titles — "The Island of the Colorblind," "An Anthropologist on Mars," "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" — may picture his writing as a gallery of grotesques, a parade of the exotically impaired.
Most students could use greater familiarity with what newspaper, magazine and book editors call 'narrative nonfiction': writing that tells a factual story, sometimes even a personal one, but also makes an argument and conveys information in vivid, effective ways".
The familiarity is important.
