Review of the Day: Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Artscatter – a terrific arts and culture blog that just celebrated its first blogoversary – stirred up some punctuation passion the other day. This reminded me to post my mini-review of Lynne Truss's quirky punctuation guide, Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. It is easy to understand the popularity of this book, because it is far from a typical grammar primer. Truss leans more to anecdote than rote – her guide is sort of a Bridget Jones version of Elements of Style. She uses lots of good examples ("cute" may be more accurate) and is good about pointing out the differences between British and American usage. Although aimed at punctuation sticklers, Eats, Shoot & Leaves would be an entertaining introduction for the punctuation-challenged. It covers all the basic punctuation marks and rules, but not the trickier stuff.

List of the Day: 20 Greatest Oregon Books

Living in Oregon, it seems like a worthwhile goal to read books by Oregonians or about life in Oregon. According to Portland Monthly magazine, these are the "20 Greatest Oregon Books Ever."

Those I have red are in red; those on my TBR shelf are in blue.

Here is the list, from the October 2006 issue of Portland Monthly, compiled by Brian Doyle.

1. Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

2. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

3. Winter Count by Barry Lopez

4. The River Why by David Duncan

5. Wildmen, Wobblies & Whistle Punks: Stewart Holbrook’s Lowbrow Northwest by Stewart Hall Holbrook

6. The Country Boy by Homer Davenport

7. Ricochet River by Robin Cody

8. Stepping Westward: The Long Search for Home in the Pacific Northwest by Sallie Tisdale

9. Hole in the Sky by William Kittredge

10. True Believer by Virginia Euwer Wolff

11. The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest by Alvin M. Josephy

12. The Journals of Lewis and Clark by Meriwether Lewis

13. Oregon Geographic Names by Lewis A. McArthur 

14. Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary

15. Fire at Eden’s Gate: Tom McCall & the Oregon Story by Brent Walth

16. The Jump-Off Creek by Molly Gloss

17. Every War Has Two Losers by William Stafford

18. Nehalem Tillamook Tales

19. To Build a Ship by Don Berry

20. In Search of Ancient Oregon: A Geological and Natural History by Ellen Morris Bishop


NOTE

Updated January 6, 2019

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire

"Once upon a time there was a little girl name Alice Green who lived on what people who don’t know any better would call a farm, but which her family called their country estate." The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire by C. M. Mayo Kind of interesting -- going with the old tried-and-true "once upon a time" line. You really do not see that in adult books. Either this is going to be a great yarn, or too cute by half. I look forward to finding out.

Review of the Day: Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut may be justifiably famous and a classic of all times, but it was not a book for me. I had avoided reading Vonnegut's best-known novel because I thought it would be unbearably dreary. How could a book about the firebombing of Dresden during WWII not be dreary? But it is on the Modern Library's Top 100 list, so I finally got around to it, and I found my answer. If you write a book about the firebombing of Dresden and fill it with time travel, space ships, and extraterrestrials, it is not dreary, it is goofy. But I do not care for goofy books about extraterrestrials, especially when they are really serious books about the morality of firebombing your enemy during war. Personally, I would rather have a dreary, realistic book than a goofy book. I know others disagree and think this book is the be-all/end-all and that Vonnegut walks on water. In fact, I acquired my first literary stalker when I posted my review of Slaughterhouse-Five on LibraryThing. A fellow reader disagreed with my opinion and wanted to argue me into the ground on every idea and nuance in the book. I had to send him a "lose my number" message and block him from my profile -- pretty harsh measures among bibliophiles. So it is with a little trepidation that I add the note that I just finished Cat's Cradle and I was not particularly wowed by that one either. I enjoyed it more than Slaughterhouse-Five, but I am simply not a fan. So it goes.

More on Julia Spencer-Fleming

After my recent post about author Julia Spencer-Fleming and her Clare Fergusson mystery series, I received a nice email from Ms. Spencer-Fleming:

Thank you so much for featuring me on your blog -- and for letting me know! I'm delighted you're enjoying the series. There is another on the way; I'm working on One Was A Soldier right now, and it should be out in fall '09 or winter '10. In it, a group of Iraqi War vets try to pick up their lives and relationships in Millers Kill. When Russ Van Alstyne rules the death of one of the group a suicide, Clare goes against him and the MKPD to prove the soldier was murdered. (I always feel I should add, "Or was he..?" after that breathless description. I'm terrible at boiling down my own work into a single sentence.) I hope you find the later books as satisfying as the first three! Yours, Julia

The new book sounds great. I will get to work reading the next three on my list so I am caught up with the series when the new one comes out.