Travis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
torachan) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
a_reader_is_me2010-12-26 11:08 pm
torachan) wrote in a_reader_is_me2010-12-26 11:08 pm
Entry tags:
Book 50: Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss
Title: Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Author: Lynne Truss
Number of Pages: 209 pages
Book Number/Goal: 50/50 for 2010
My Rating: 3/5
Jacket Summary: Through sloppy usage and low standards on the internet, in email, and now "txt msgs", we have made proper punctuation an endangered species. In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, former editor Lynne Truss dares to say, in her delightfully urbane, witty, and very English way, that it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them as the wonderful and necessary things they are. If there are only pedants left who care, then so be it. This is a book for people who love punctuation and get upset when it is mishandled. From George Orwell shunning the semicolon, to New Yorker editor Harold Ross's epic arguments with James Thurber over commas, this lively history makes a powerful case for the preservation of a system of printing conventions that is much too subtle to be mucked about with.
Review: This was a pretty funny and entertaining read, and I liked that she was able to make fun of herself and admit that punctuation is always changing. The thing that actually really annoyed me was her assumption that people who care about grammar and people who use smileys are two separate groups with no overlap. XD (Also the general tone of "oh noes, the internets!" that some of it had.) I don't think it lived up to the massive hype around it, though.
Year in Review
I made it to my goal! I had a slow start and by the end of June had only read 11 books out of a planned 50, so I decided to drop my goal to 30. Soon after that, I started reading a lot more often and once I got to 30 and it was only the end of September, I decided to go for 40. I hit 40 with a month left to go in the year and decided, well, if I read a bunch of short books, I can make my original goal, and so I did.
I figure since the main reason behind giving myself a goal is to simply read books I'm interested in (especially ones on my shelf), as long I am reading books I would otherwise read, and not just picking something at random because it's short, what does the length matter? This way by picking eight shorter books (I actually went for the short stuff starting with book #43), I was getting eight books read that I had wanted to read, and getting eight books off my shelf.
2011 Goal
I do, however, want to motivate myself to read longer books, since I have many of them on my shelf, so I think this coming year's goal is going to be 50 books total with at least 10 of them being 300+ pages. If I don't slack off in the first half of the year like I did with 2010, it should be an easy goal to meet.
Author: Lynne Truss
Number of Pages: 209 pages
Book Number/Goal: 50/50 for 2010
My Rating: 3/5
Jacket Summary: Through sloppy usage and low standards on the internet, in email, and now "txt msgs", we have made proper punctuation an endangered species. In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, former editor Lynne Truss dares to say, in her delightfully urbane, witty, and very English way, that it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them as the wonderful and necessary things they are. If there are only pedants left who care, then so be it. This is a book for people who love punctuation and get upset when it is mishandled. From George Orwell shunning the semicolon, to New Yorker editor Harold Ross's epic arguments with James Thurber over commas, this lively history makes a powerful case for the preservation of a system of printing conventions that is much too subtle to be mucked about with.
Review: This was a pretty funny and entertaining read, and I liked that she was able to make fun of herself and admit that punctuation is always changing. The thing that actually really annoyed me was her assumption that people who care about grammar and people who use smileys are two separate groups with no overlap. XD (Also the general tone of "oh noes, the internets!" that some of it had.) I don't think it lived up to the massive hype around it, though.
Year in Review
I made it to my goal! I had a slow start and by the end of June had only read 11 books out of a planned 50, so I decided to drop my goal to 30. Soon after that, I started reading a lot more often and once I got to 30 and it was only the end of September, I decided to go for 40. I hit 40 with a month left to go in the year and decided, well, if I read a bunch of short books, I can make my original goal, and so I did.
I figure since the main reason behind giving myself a goal is to simply read books I'm interested in (especially ones on my shelf), as long I am reading books I would otherwise read, and not just picking something at random because it's short, what does the length matter? This way by picking eight shorter books (I actually went for the short stuff starting with book #43), I was getting eight books read that I had wanted to read, and getting eight books off my shelf.
2011 Goal
I do, however, want to motivate myself to read longer books, since I have many of them on my shelf, so I think this coming year's goal is going to be 50 books total with at least 10 of them being 300+ pages. If I don't slack off in the first half of the year like I did with 2010, it should be an easy goal to meet.