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mothwingI really should stop reading several books at the same time. It usually means I don't finish all of them.
25.
25.
Dress Your Family in Cordoroy and Denim, David Sedaris.
I have to admit that after reading the enthused voices of various newspaper critics on the first page I would have expected something completely different, but I am by no means disappointed. I love the main character, Sedaris' style and the way he effortlessly combines autobiographic episodes with social commentary and humour.
Not as "Hilarious!!!" as the critics said, but I love it nontheless. Or maybe I misunderstand the meaning of "hilarious". I always thought that that meant something like "pant-wettingly funny", but that's not what this book is to me; it has a rather heart-warming, if sometimes slightly wry humour? Hmm.("They banded together in third grade. Ann Carlsworth, Christie Kaymore, Deb Bevins, Mike Holliwell, Doug Middleton, Thad Pope: they were the core of the popular crowd, and for the next six years my classmates and I studied their lives the way we were supposed to study math and English. What confused us most was the absence of any spcific formula. Were they funny? No. Interesting? Yawn. None owned pools or horses. They had no special talents, and their grades were unremarkable. It was their dearth of excellence that gave the rest of us hope and kept us on our toes. Every now and then they'd select a new member, and the general attitude among the student body was 'Oh, pick me!' It didn't matter what you were like on your own. The group would make you special. That was it's magic.
So complete was their power that I actually felt honoured when one of them hit me in the mouth with a rock. He'd gotten me after school, and upon returning home, I ran into my sister's bedroom, hugging my bloody Kleenex and crying, 'It was Thad!!!'
Lisa was one grade higher than me, but still she understood the significance. 'Did he say anything?' she asked. 'Did you save the rock?'")
24.Who cares about English Usage?, David Crystal.
Oh, this is a book that several of our prescriptive grammarians need, need, need to read. It's both short and also a really funny read, and illustrates some of the things very nicely which grammar nazis on the intarwebz regularly throw fits about and which are just evidences of language changing, as it tends to. Good heavens.
("S.O.S., as everyone knows, stands for 'Save Our Syntax'. At various places in this book, I'll be discussing under this heading a grammatical point which regularly causes people to send up distress rockets, and demand linguistic lifejackets.")
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Date: Monday, May 26th, 2008 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, May 26th, 2008 07:17 pm (UTC)Why does everybody around here get to meet David Sedaris? Fen up there met him, too.
His boyfriend needs to move.
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Date: Monday, May 26th, 2008 07:59 pm (UTC)"Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim" is my favorite of his: the last story in the book is simply amazing. This isn't the funniest of his books, but I found quite a few parts humorous. There are some very serious moments in this book as well...
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Date: Monday, May 26th, 2008 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 03:54 pm (UTC)What I really don't like is his temporal organisation. The frequent changes between analepsis and prolepsis make me slightly dizzy.