Booking Through Thursday: Grammar

In honor of National Grammar Day … it IS “March Fourth” after all … do you have any grammar books? Punctuation? Writing guidelines? Style books?


More importantly, have you read them?

How do you feel about grammar in general? Important? Vital? Unnecessary? Fussy?

For more Booking Through Thursday responses, click here.

In a way, I'm embarrassed to admit the answer to this question...

I have several grammar, writing and style books in my house. I have a few MLA guidebooks, a few AP stylebooks from my former life as a reporter, several grammar books and a bunch of other random writing and grammar books. Most of them come from my college years, where writing and style books often were required course books, but I keep them around because I think having references is important.

I don't refer to/read them particularly often, mostly because I've internalized many of the grammatical rules. I'm not being elitist here or anything, I just spent so much of my life writing and teaching others how to write that the rules just became second nature.

Grammar is incredibly important in my book. I cringe when I see misspellings and blatant grammatical errors in my reading, whether it be books, newspapers or blogs. I've been known to point out errors on signs and in advertisements to friends (Most notably, the "20 Items or Less" checkout at Wal-Mart - AHHH!). It bothers me when I hear obvious grammatical errors on TV and in movies, except when a character's background supports poor grammar. These people are professional writers and should know their stuff, but many don't.

Unfortunately, grammar is overlooked far too often in schools now. I have friends who went on to become teachers and were told, during their student teaching tenures, not to "worry" about proper grammar on papers. It was the ideas that supposedly counted. As a result, we have kids who cannot form coherent sentences but who spend so much of their time writing through text, instant message and blogs. It's just sad and makes me fear for the future of actual writing.

I could go on for a lot longer on this subject, but I will spare you all my grammar diatribe. In short, yes, grammar is vital and I strive to use proper grammar at all times.

Review: Brooklyn: A Novel by Colm Toibin

Title: Brooklyn: A Novel

Author: Colm Toibin

Pages: 262

Source: The library where I work

Rating: 9/10

Challenges: Read 'n' Review challenge

First Sentence: "Eilis Lacey, sitting at the window of the upstairs living room in the house on Friary Street, noticed her sister walking briskly from work."

Summary (From book flap):

Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the years following World War Two. Though skilled at bookkeeping, she cannot find a job in the miserable Irish economy. When and Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America -- to live and work in a Brooklyn neighborhood "just like Ireland" -- she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind.

Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, a blond Italian from a big family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. He takes Eilis to Coney Island and Ebbets Field, and home to dinner in the two-room apartment he shares with his brothers and parents. He talks of having children who are Dodgers fans. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love with Tony, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.

My Two Cents:

I absolutely loved this novel. If I hadn't had other distractions to deal with, I easily could have finished it in an afternoon. It was short, but rich in characterization and lyricism.

The central character, Eilis, is just what anyone would expect of a fairly sheltered girl moving to a big city in a foreign country. After a lifetime spent in the shadow of her sister, she doesn't know how to act when all the focus is on her. It takes Eilis some time to gain her sea legs, so to speak, and even then she struggles somewhat with the female relationships into which her boarding situation forces her.She is a woman caught between two worlds, and the reader really gets to see that struggle. As the end of the book neared, I found myself growing angry with Eilis for some of the choices she made, but I also could see that her choices grew out of the way Toibin had characterized her for the bulk of the book.

My favorite character, though, was Tony. I couldn't help but smile nearly every time he came into the action. He was funny and charming and incredibly caring. You know how everyone on the Twilight bandwagon says they want to find their Edward? Well, I would want to find my Tony. I just adored him.

Toibin's writing is beautiful. He brings both small-town Ireland and big-city New York to life on the page, and he writes a very convincing female character in Eilis. Here's an example of his writing, chosen at random:

She lay on the bed with the letters beside her. For the past few weeks, she realized, she had not really thought of home. The town had come to her in flashing pictures, such as the one that had come during the afternoon of the sale, and she had thought of course of her mother and Rose, but her own life in Enniscorthy, the life she had lost and would never have again, she had kept out of her mind. Every day she had come back to this small room in this house full of sounds and gone over everything new that had happened. Now, all that seemed like nothing compared to the picture she had of home, of her own room, the house in Friary Street, the food she had eaten there, the clothes she wore, how quiet everything was.

The only criticism I have of this book is that Eilis makes a big choice in the end, but she doesn't make that choice for the reason I would have liked her to. Was the decision in character for her? Yes. Did it make sense? Yes. But, did I like the reason behind that choice? No, I didn't.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes vivid characters, flowing prose passages and coming-of-age stories.

Teaser Tuesday: March 2, 2010

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read

Open to a random page

Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here are mine:

Rhett, standing in the hall, his hat in his hand, heard as he was intended to hear and, turning, surveyed the room for a moment. He looked pointedly at Mrs. Elsing's flat bosom, grinned suddenly and, bowing, made his exit. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, p. 195







The trident thrust and the Samnite convulsed and then was still, his bright blood staining the sand. Gaius sat back, licking his dry lips, his throat raw from cheering. The Forest House by Marion Zimmer Bradley, p. 307







Then she pulled a Seattle map out of her backpack. As she studied the city's confusing layout, she pondered the impact of landscape upon personality. Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos, p. 147

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?: March 1, 2010

Note: My 50 Followers contest (international) ends at 10 p.m. CST today. Click here for details.

Hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey Through a World of Books, It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly bookish meme whereby bloggers share their reading for the past week.

This week, I finished reading:

Zan-Gah: A Prehistoric Adventure by Allan Richard Shickman
Brooklyn: A Novel by Colm Toibin
Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country by Allan Richard Shickman

This week, I reviewed (Click on the title to be taken to my review):
Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner

This week, I'm reading:
The Forest House by Marion Zimmer Bradley
A Century Turns by William J. Bennett
Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

This week, I hope to begin reading:
Lady of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Flesh Statue by U.L. Harper
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosenay

What are you reading this week?

Booking Through Thursday: Why I Read

For more Booking Through Thursday responses, click here.

I’ve seen this quotation in several places lately. It’s from Sven Birkerts’ ‘The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age’:
“To read, when one does so of one’s own free will, is to make a volitional statement, to cast a vote; it is to posit an elsewhere and set off toward it. And like any traveling, reading is at once a movement and a comment of sorts about the place one has left. To open a book voluntarily is at some level to remark the insufficiency either of one’s life or one’s orientation toward it.”
To what extent does this describe you?

I don't feel as if this describes my reasons for reading whatsoever. I read because I enjoy learning about new people, places and things. I read because I want to be able, in some small way, to experience things so remote from my own life that I could never have knowledge of them first-hand.

I guess, though, if you view the desire for more knowledge or experiences different from your own to be an "insufficiency," because it technically is, then this quotation would describe me and all others who read.

Hmm... Two sides of the same coin... What do you think?

Review: Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner

Title: Certain Girls

Author: Jennifer Weiner

Pages: 384

Source: The library where I work

Rating: 5/10

Challenges: Read 'n' Review challenge; Take Another Chance challenge (Challenge 7: Break a Prejudice)

First Sentence: "When I was a kid, our small-town paper published wedding announcements, with descriptions of the ceremonies and dresses and pictures of the brides."

Summary (From book flap):

Readers fell in love with Cannie Shapiro, the smart, sharp-tongued, bighearted heroine of Good in Bed who found her happy ending after her mother came out of the closet, her father fell out of her life, and her ex-boyfriend started chronicling their ex-sex life in the pages of a national magazine.

Now Cannie's back. After her debut novel -- a fictionalized (and highly sexualized) verson of her life -- became an overnight bestseller, she dropped out of the public eye and turned to writing science fiction under a pseudonym. She's happily married to the tall, charming diet doctor Peter Krushelevansky and has settled into a life that she finds wonderfully predictable -- knitting in the front row of her daughter Joy's drama rehearsals, volunteering at the library, and taking over-forty yoga classes with her best friend Samantha.

As preparations for Joy's bat mitzvah begin, everything seems right in Cannie's world. Then Joy discovers the novel Cannie wrote years before and suddenly finds herself faced with what she thinks is the truth about her own conception -- the story her mother hid from her all her life. When Peter surprises his wife by saying he wants to have a baby, the family is forced to reconsider its history, its future, and what it means to be truly happy.

My Two Cents:

I'm going to preface this review with a few caveats. 1) I have never read a book considered "chick-lit" before. 2) I've definitely not read this novel's predecessor, Good in Bed. I had planned to read Good in Bed instead of this one, but my library doesn't have it for some odd reason. 3) I don't like novels in which characters have a changeable flaw, whine about it, but do nothing to change.

We now return to our regularly-scheduled review.

Certain Girls started out fairly strong. In fact, I actually liked it for the first 100 pages or so. It was funny, the writing was solid, and I could kind of see people resembling the characters existing.

Then, it all went downhill from there.

First, Joy bugged me to no end. Sure, she's 12-going-on-13, so she's bound to be annoying and snotty, but Joy was just far, far too snotty for my taste. She snaps and talks back and sneaks around. If she were my daughter and pulling the same stunts, I would ground her and take away all privileges. She routinely (In her narration) calls her mother fat, and that really got to me. I also consistently wondered where she got a lot of the money she was using to buy things and go places. An allowance was mentioned once, and it's pretty obvious that the family wasn't hurting for money, but the ease with which Joy spent her money on things surprised me. Maybe that's just my disconnect from that world that's talking. Joy was definitely my least-favorite character, even at the end.

I also was not fond of the people surrounding the central family. They all seemed much to money-hungry and concerned with status and fame. Of course, a lot of people are like that, but there was just something about how they all handled and viewed their money that didn't sit right with me.

Cannie got on my nerves, too, but I liked her a little better than I liked Joy. I think a lot of the reason why I couldn't stand Joy was because there was nothing in her background story that would cause her to be so mean and bitter. She just was mean and bitter. Cannie, however, had been hurt many times, and she had been deeply hurt, so there was a reason behind her actions. Did I agree with many of them? No, but I could see where they came from.

I wasn't a fan of how Cannie continually thought she was fat or looked dowdy, but never did anything about it. I have struggled, as many women have, with body image issues in the past, but I'm a firm believer in the power of thinking. If you want to change something about yourself, then change it, don't just think about changing it. Cannie was all thought and no action.

Weiner's writing, however, was what saved the rating on this book. She's actually a very good writer, even if I don't like her choice of characters. I found myself laughing out loud at several times.

I've always thought that "chick-lit" is about shallow themes and shallow people, and I'm sure there's plenty of that out there. I nearly picked up The Devil Wears Prada to read for this portion of the TAC Challenge, but I've seen the movie and hated it, so I didn't want to torture myself. Talk about shallow.

Anyway, while there was a lot of superficiality in this novel, there also were some deeper issues: Parental abuse, body image, infertility. It wasn't all fluff and party dresses, which was OK with me. I just don't think I'll be reading anymore "chick-lit" anytime soon.

Teaser Tuesday: February 23, 2010

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read

Open to a random page

Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here are mine:

 

With so unruly a horse or slave he would have known to take sterner measures. Perhaps it was harder for him to discipline Gaius because so often he saw Moruadh looking out of her son's eyes. The Forest House by Marion Zimmer Bradley, p. 200

 

 

 

 
As with his own people, there was a distinct line between the work of men and women, and as with his own, there was deep shame in crossing the well-established separation. Zan had always held the labor of women in high respect, necessary and gratefully received by everybody; yet his tribesman would no sooner do it themselves than seek to bear a child, which was the special gift of women. Zan-Gah by Allan Richard Shickman, p. 81




When George and Jim returned, all four of them set out walking along the strand, the two men running at first to dry themselves. Eilis was amused at how tight and flimsy their swimming togs were. Brooklyn: A Novel by Colm Toibin, p. 232