Skip to main content

Started out as Christmasy, ended up bein' about grammar

FOUR DAYS TIL CHRISTMAS.


My current plans are to finish The Night Watch at home, and then barrel through A Walk in the Woods and From the Closet to the Altar when I get back on the 26th. Five days, four of which will be spent with my parents, for they are coming up here AFTER I go downstate to visit them. I'm sure that'll work out fine and no one will be sick of anyone.

I started Eats, Shoots & Leaves because I'm a horrible person with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It's already hilarious, so that's a relief, and on the plus side, is about grammar.

I have some issues with grammar. The author (Lynne Truss) is very much on the side of overly zealous grammar snobs, but in a I'm-a-super-fun-person-don't-you-want-to-be-my-best-friend way (yes I do, Lynne). I didn't CARE about grammar until I took a zillion foreign languages in college for opera. I couldn't diagram a sentence at all and I never really listened to the rules in grade school/high school, because I was busy writing Cheers fan fiction. So all of this magnificence you see before you is the result of reading a bunch of shit and unconsciously copying it.

Because of this, I get a bit leery of grammar snobs. They notice things I do that are technically wrong. But because I never took the time to learn these rules and thus have zero attachment to them, my opinion is that they don't matter. If you can communicate your point, I don't care if you have a dangling modifier or whatever other sin I frequently commit. Also -- split infinitives? Fuck. You. Do you know why those are seen as bad? Because the guy who came up with The Rules was going off Latin. WHERE YOU CAN'T SPLIT THE INFINITIVE BECAUSE IT'S ONE WORD. But we can. And 'to go boldly' sounds stupid.

If your language allows you to do fun, word-changey-uppy things, then you do that. 'Boldly' is earlier in the sentence and so it sounds important. 'TO BOLDLY GO' sayeth Patrick Stewart, followed by the crashingly awesome intro (for serious, no theme music is ever going to be as good as the STNG opening).

So I'll read this book. And I'll learn some things. But if anyone ever feels they need to tell me to correct my grammar (I can only assume it hasn't happened yet because you all live in mortal fear of me and my GIF-y wrath), know that my response no matter what the season shall be:


I love you all. Merry Christmas. And Happy Not Actually the End of the World Day. Glad we survived that.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Blogger Hop, Pt II

All right. The question for this week is:  "Do you read only one book at a time, or do you have several going at once?" Oh-ho my. I have an issue with book commitment. I start a new book, and it's exciting and fresh, and I get really jazzed about it, and then 20% of the way through, almost without fail, I start getting bored and want to start another book. I once had seven books going at the same time, because I kept getting bored and starting new ones. It's a sickness. Right now I'm being pretty good and working on The Monk , Northanger Abbey , Kissing the Witch , and I'm about to start Waiting for the Barbarians since my friend lent it to me. But The Monk and NA are basically books I only read when I'm at work, so I don't see it so much as working on four books, as having books in different locales. Yes. This entry wasn't as good as some of the others, but I shall rally on the morrow. Yes I shall.
22 comments
Read more

Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy: Readalong Signup

You know what was the third bestseller of its time after Uncle Tom's Cabin  and Ben-Hur ? THAT IS CORRECT, Looking Backward  by Edward Bellamy.  No one talks about this book anymore, but it was a sci-fi utopian novel about a young man waking up in the year 2000, which is a socialist utopia . Looking Backward  spawned over 150 "Bellamy Clubs" that got together and discussed political issues, and it looks like a damn fascinating book. It is also available FOR FREE online. Here's the Project Gutenberg link . So read this not too long book with me in February and get familiar with a bestseller of the 19th century!
12 comments
Read more

Minithon: The Mini Readathon, January 11th, 2020

The minithon is upon us once more! Minithons are for the lazy. Minithons are for the uncommitted. Minithons are for us. The minithon lasts 6 hours (10 AM to 4 PM CST), therefore making it a mini readathon, as opposed to the lovely Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon and 24in48, both of which you should participate in, but both of which are a longer commitment than this, the Busy Watching Netflix person's readathon. By 'read for six hours' what's really meant in the minithon is "read a little bit and eat a lot of snacks and post pictures of your books and your snacks, but mostly your snacks." We like to keep it a mini theme here, which mainly means justifying your books and your snacks to fit that theme. Does your book have children in it? Mini people! Does it have a dog! Mini wolf! Does it have pencils? Mini versions of graphite mines! or however you get graphite, I don't really know. I just picture toiling miners. The point is, justify it or don't...
3 comments
Read more