The New Well-Tempered Sentence
Posted: 2010/11/05 Filed under: Book Reviews, BookLust I, NonFiction | Tags: 2010, book lust i, book review, language, NonFiction, november, writing Leave a commentGordon, Karen Elizabeth. The New Well-Tempered Sentence: a Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed.NewYork: Ticknor & Fields, 1993.
This is the kind of book the coolest of cool professors would use in a writing class. The language is hip and humorous, the illustrations funny and fabulous. While Gordon lays down the law about when and where to use an exclamation point, a period, a comma, or semi colon, I don’t feel obligated to follow her to the letter (or period). I read The New Well-Tempered Sentence as merely suggestion; here’s what you can do, if you so chose (and obviously I don’t). Think Edward Estlin Cummings. Gordon is careful to use witty examples and whimsical illustrations to prove her points to go along with that hip and cool vibe. This is the essential reference book you have on your shelf and because it is so funky you are not ashamed to have it in plain sight.
BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Words to the Wise” (p 249). For this particular inclusion the chapter would have been more appropriate if called, “Words to the Wise About Writing Words” because Gordon’s book is all about punctuation.
Meaning of Everything
Posted: 2010/08/19 Filed under: Book Reviews, BookLust II, NonFiction | Tags: 2010, august, biography, book lust ii, book review, language, NonFiction Leave a commentWinchester, Simon. The Meaning of Everything: the Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
I suppose since Winchester’s The Meaning of Everything serves as a follow-up to The Professor and the Madman: a Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary I should link to the review of The Professor…here.
I hate to admit this, but I didn’t care for The Meaning of Everything. Okay, while I’m being honest I’ll go for broke – I didn’t get beyond page 19. There. I said it. I was bored. As a person deeply connected to reading you would think I would be intimate with words, especially the origin of words. I mean, words form sentences and sentences form paragraphs and paragraphs form pages and pages fill books, right? And books are what it’s all about, right? No. I guess the bottom line is I don’t care about where the word came from. The word, when it stands alone, is boring. How sad is that? I need words strung together into sentences. Those sentences need to be woven together to ultimately make a story interesting. This, however, was not.
BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Dewey Deconstructed: 400s” (p 68).
August ’09 Is…
Posted: 2009/08/02 Filed under: BookLust I, BookLust II, Fiction, NonFiction | Tags: adventure, astronomy, Fiction, language, Music, new orleans, NonFiction Leave a commentAugust is a long awaited trip homehome. August is the trials and tribulations of hiring. August is a little Avett Brothers, drums and Sean for music. August is getting back to cooking. August is so many different things, including a goal of 84 miles. Don’t ask. Here’s what August is for books:
- The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester (the easiest way to celebrate National Language Month.)
- The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (Marking the anniversary of hurricane Katrina later this month – The Moviegoer takes place in New Orleans.)
- Mutual Friend by Frederick Busch (Celebrating Busch’s birth month.)
- Turbulent Souls by Stephen J. Dubner (Blame it on someone else month. I think I’ll have to wait for the review to explain this one.)
- These Tremendous Mountains by David Freeman Hawke (Celebrating the expedition of Lewis and Clark)
- Wind, Sand & Stars by Antoine Du Saint (August is National Aviation Month)
And for LibraryThing it is: Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey and I really, really should reread the one Early Review book I didn’t get around to reviewing, Honeymoon in Tehran by Azadeh Moaveni.
For fun it’s a bunch of running band vegetable books. Go figure.