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

My Book Review of 'Bitch Goddess for Dummies'

Recently, I attended a zoom session on chick lit by the Chennai Lockdown Literary Festival (CLLF). In the session, one of the speakers was Maya Sharma Sriram. I was so impressed with the way she conducted the session and answered the questions that I decided to pick up her chick lit novel, ‘Bitch Goddess for Dummies’ brought out by Rupa Publications in 2012. And I was not disappointed. I’m not sure if I was biased toward the book by the personality I had seen on zoom or not, but I quite enjoy chick lit and have read several chick lit novels in my thirties. So the novel is about a 27-year-old woman Mira Iyer who decides to transform her personality from good girl to ‘bitch goddess’ to deal with the people in her life. Her mom who is constantly trying to fix her up with some eligible guy so that she can get married and Sanya, the real office bitch who is always cosying up to their bosses and vying for a promotion, are just two of the people in her life causing her angst. So it’s go...

Blogging with a Purpose - Theme Post

I’ve loved books since I was a child. I vaguely recall the 'Ladybird' series of books that I read as a child, but the first novel I remember reading was ‘The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage’ by Enid Blyton that my mom brought home for me to read from the library when I was in Class 4. I then finished the children’s books section in library after library in my neighbourhood. Reading has served me well since I now work as an editor. Reading was what filled my hours as a child and kept loneliness at bay. Reading is what helped me find myself at age 40 when I got back to the habit after several years of reading sporadically. I now average about 25 books a year that I track on Goodreads . I’ve had the opportunity to interact with quite a few authors online and offline. My cause for the Blogchatter #BloggingWithAPurpose campaign is "promoting authors." There is a popular joke in the publishing industry these days that there are more authors than readers. Authors a...

Book Review of 'Resilience: Stories of Muslim Women'

I read ‘Resilience: Stories of Muslim Women’ by Shubha Menon recently. The author, who belongs to one of my writing groups, requested a review of the book and also sent me a review copy. The foreword is by Syeda Hameed. Syeda Hameed established the Muslim Women’s Forum in 2001. The author, Shubha Menon, has documented the life of Muslim girls and women of Nizamuddin Basti in Delhi. She discusses the origin of the basti, how it became a magnet for displaced Muslims and goes on to outline “scenes from the medieval ages” in the basti. Sordid realities such as the practice of halala and mutah are discussed, which are used to terrorise women. The author shares the story of Farida, who has five sisters. By the time Farida was sixteen, she was a mother of two and abandoned. She had been only accorded the status of a domestic servant. Her husband had cruelly divorced her saying “ Log teen bar talaq datein hain, mein tumhein hazaar baar talaq deta hoon.” After a few years, ...

Ash Talks Books

Search This Blog