Review of 'Between You & Me' - Confessions of a Comma Queen

'Between you & me - Confessions of a comma queen' by Mary Norris was on my must-read list for a long time. I finally ordered the physical copy from Amazon and it coincided with the start of my book bingo. I chose it for the 'Memoir' category of my book bingo although it is only part-memoir.

Written by a copyeditor who worked with the New Yorker for over 30 years, the book was bound to be a class apart. There were several instances of the author finding an error in some great writer's work, and she lists the sentence and error.

She comes across as a real nerd who devotes one whole chapter to pencils and a museum of sharpeners. She writes to a pencil manufacturer to lodge a complaint about a particular batch of their pencils showing how persnickety she is. Yes! The company does write back with a detailed explanation, which she prints in this book.

Her chapter on gender is accompanied by the story of how her brother started identifying as a woman and so was a 'trans' person. She outlines her difficulty in referring to 'him' as 'her' and how her unwitting mistakes in pronoun reference cut the brother-turned-sister to the core.

I loved her chapter on commas the best. As a copyeditor, I've been rather fascinated with the 17 rules of comma usage ever since I began my career. I was able to appreciate this chapter probably due to my grasp of the use of commas. She also devotes a chapter to hyphens, but that didn't appeal to me as much. She talks about the difference between an umlaut and a diaeresis—a couple of punctuation marks we don't often come across.

I took a few days to finish this book. One needs to absorb the information carefully and it is not a quick read. It is partly a reference book, one that I would recommend to copyeditors who have considerable experience in the field.

Comments

Review of 'Magical Women'

I bought Magical Women by Hachette India on Kindle a few days back. It had been on my TBR for a long time. However, I hadn’t read up on what kind of a collection of stories the book would contain. People who like weird stories, horror, dystopia and sci-fi might enjoy this collection, which has been edited by Sukanya Venkatraghavan. It was published in 2019. The editor’s note states, “Each story in this collection is unique in its representation of what it means to be magical.” It may not be everyone’s cup of tea. The book is well written, but some of the themes are a bit disturbing. The first story “ Gul” by Shreya Ila Anasuya has themes of lesbianism. The second story “ Gandaberunda” by S.V. Sujatha is violent and macabre. When I read the third story, ‘Rulebook for Creating a Universe’ by Tashan Mehta, I felt that although I was reading English, I was seeing Greek and Latin. It went totally above my head. I really enjoyed the fourth story ‘The Demon Hunter’s Dilemm...

All the light we cannot see

This was the book of the month in one of the book clubs I belong to. Although slow in the beginning, it picked up pace after about 25% of the book was over. There was tension in the story, so as a reader I wanted to know what happened next although I could not connect to the characters very well. I found the minor character Frederick interesting and somewhat of a true leader. The part about the cursed gem 'The Sea of Flames' was interesting. The 'love story' between Verner and Marie Laure seemed very one-sided ( from his side only). The book highlights how war changes the lives of everyone caught in its grip and how powerless they are over their own fate

Normal People

I must say I loved this book from the very beginning. I liked the sparse writing style and how the author minimizes the use of quoted speech. I cared about the characters and wanted to know what would happen to them. Marianne shows us how an intelligent girl can go down a strange path due to family problems, which by the way, remains a shadowy backstory. Only her troubled relationship with her brother and mom is outlined. The relationship she had with her dad is up for conjecture, but the reader understands it was rather abnormal. Some readers might be put off by the kinky sex scenes in the book, but I looked upon it as a part of the story of a troubled character with self-esteem issues. It also highlights the lengths to which a person would go for love. Even as Marianne degrades herself in her own eyes, the reader doesn't judge her but only wants her to redeem herself and do better. Connor comes across as a decent human being after he finds himself. On the whole,...

Ash Talks Books

Search This Blog