Greetings from Amazon.com Delivers Books for Writers FEATURED IN THIS EMAIL: * "Words Fail Me: What Everyone Who Writes Should Know About Writing" by Patricia T. O'Conner * "Style: Toward Clarity and Grace" by Joseph M. Williams * "Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay: Practical Advice for the Grammatically Challenged" by Richard Lederer and Richard Dowis * "The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage" by Kingsley Amis * "Night Errands: How Poets Use Dreams" edited by Roderick Townley "Words Fail Me: What Everyone Who Writes Should Know About Writing" by Patricia T. O'Conner http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0151003718/entertainmentsit Patricia T. O'Conner's "Words Fail Me" is written in the same lighthearted tone as her snappy grammar guide, "Woe Is I." This time out, O'Conner tackles the writer's art. "Good writing," she says, "is writing that works." This book is the perfect text for the novice writer who tends to gravitate toward comedic instructors. "Crummy spelling," says O'Conner, "is more noticeable than crummy anything else." Organizing your material "may be a pain in the butt, but it's thankless, too!" "Write as though you were addressing someone whose opinion you value, even if the reader is ... a stingy insurance company that won't pay for your tummy tuck." O'Conner's material isn't new--like many such books, "Words Fail Me" advocates the use of small words, fresh verbs, and only well-chosen modifiers--but rarely is a primer so amusing. And the clever titles strewn throughout--"Taking Leave of Your Tenses," "The It Parade"-- provide added pleasure, particularly for anyone who knows how hard it can be to put a headline on a piece of writing. "Style: Toward Clarity and Grace" by Joseph M. Williams http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226899152/entertainmentsit "Telling me to 'Be clear,'" writes Joseph M. Williams in "Style: Toward Clarity and Grace," "is like telling me to 'Hit the ball squarely.' I know that. What I don't know is how to do it." If you are ever going to know how to write clearly, it will be after reading Williams's book, which is a rigorous examination of--and lesson in--the elements of fine writing. With any luck, your clear writing will turn graceful, as well. Though most of us, says Williams, would be happy just to write "clear, coherent, and appropriately emphatic prose," he is not content to teach us just that. He also attempts, by way of example, to determine what constitutes elegant writing. Despite the proliferation of books in this genre, rarely does one feel so confident in one's instructor. Williams is meticulous and exacting, yet never pedantic. Though he agrees with most of his grammarian colleagues that, generally speaking, the active voice is better than the passive and that the ordinary word is preferable to the fancy, Williams is also quick to assert that there's no sense learning a rule "if all we can do is obey it." And he is most emphatic about the absurdity of prescriptions concerning usage (such as, "Never begin a sentence with a coordinating conjunction"). Such rules, he says, "are 'violated' so consistently that, unless we are ready to indict for bad grammar just about every serious writer of modern English, we have to reject as misinformed anyone who would attempt to enforce them." "Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay: Practical Advice for the Grammatically Challenged" by Richard Lederer and Richard Dowis http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312203632/entertainmentsit That tireless verbivore Richard Lederer is at it again, this time providing, in cahoots with co-author Richard Dowis, a quick-and-dirty grammar guide. In a time when Sing and Snore Ernie says, "It feels good to lay down," and Columbia University professor Edward Shapiro employs a "whom" where "who" is called for (in his book "Shakespeare and the Jews"), we clearly need Lederer and Dowis to set us straight. In "Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay," the authors steer us away from problematic words and phrases (such as "Aren't I"); remind us of definitions we may have, er, confused (of, say, "flotsam" and "jetsam," "podium" and "lectern," "prone" and "supine"); and teach us to use "comprise" correctly. But Lederer and Dowis are hardly anachronous sticklers. Their section on grammatical myths advocates the judicious splitting of an infinitive, using a preposition "to end a sentence with," and even, sometimes, embracing cliches. "'Different from' is almost always right, they say, but "if your ear tells you otherwise, choose 'different than.'" Their "rule" concerning comma use states that, "If the addition or omission of a comma makes the meaning clearer, add it or remove it even if doing so seems to violate some other rule." How refreshing it is to encounter grammarians who do not live in a vacuum, who know that "connotations are often more important than definitions, and that the true meaning of a word or phrase is the effect it has on readers." "The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage" by Kingsley Amis http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312206577/entertainmentsit Kingsley Amis's "The King's English" is as witty and biting as his novels. Modestly presented as a volume "in which some modern linguistic problems are discussed and perhaps settled," Amis's usage guide is a worthy companion to his revered "Fowler's." "The King's English" is distinctly British, but never mind: it's sensational. And unlike many of his countrymen, Amis is decidedly pro-American, even admitting a "bias towards American modes of expression as likely to seem the livelier and ... smarter alternative." In a world populated by usage mavens too willing to waffle, Amis is refreshingly unequivocal. Of the expression "meaningful dialogue," he says it "looks and sounds unbearably pompous. Nevertheless one would not wish to be deprived of a phrase that so unerringly points out its user as a humourless ninny." "To cross one's sevens," he says, "is either gross affectation or, these days, straightforward ignorance." And the frequently misused word "viable," he claims, "should be dropped altogether ... simply because it has taken the fancy of every trendy little twit on the look- out for a posh word for feasible, practicable." Forget Amis's protestations of being unfit for the position of language arbiter; after all, as he says, "the defence of the language is too large a matter to be left to the properly qualified." "Night Errands: How Poets Use Dreams" edited by Roderick Townley http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0822940779/entertainmentsit In "Night Errands," Maxine Kumin, Denise Levertov, Philip Levine, and 23 other poets ponder the relationship between dreams and poetry. Some claim to have dreamt poems in their entirety. Nicholas Christopher tells of a poem he wrote after he came upon its title in a dream. Others don't remember their dreams at all but enter a dreamlike state to work through their poems. And still others, such as Laurel Blossom, consider the similarities between dreams and poems. The most common thread here, though, concerns the ways in which poets use poetry as a way to nail down, make sense of, or complete those dreams that slip away as one awakens. "All day," writes Patricia Traxler ("Forbidden Words") in one of the book's most evocative pieces, "you remain in the sway of this unremembered dream, at times believing you're about to retrieve it intact from the bog, but always it stays beyond reach." Traxler revels in the elusive dream that would likely frustrate the rest of us. "I know it means I've been given the seed of another poem, and that in the coming days and nights my job will be to tend it and coax it into being. Sometimes I succeed." --Jane Steinberg was a longtime editor at Seattle Weekly and a stringer for Glamour magazine. She now writes from her home in New Jersey. ****** You'll find more great books, articles, excerpts, and interviews in Amazon.com's Reference section at Reference
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