Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–if any–do you have in your library?
I read them, occasionally. As for grammar and punctuation, if you've read one, you've read them all. I don't mean that they're the same--the execution is different, of course, so reading any of these for pleasure means you're reading for the author's style--but the rules are the same. And if all the rules are the same, what's the point in owning all these books?
Since I write in my free time, one would think that I would have a bunch of writing guides in my possession. In reality, no. I mean, sure, there are the few writing guides like Stephen King's On Writing or Strunk and White that I would even recommend to non-writers, but on the whole I view most of the offerings in this genre as useless. Writing style is a personal thing, and I'd rather muddle along by myself than follow somebody else's how-to.
As of this moment, I have on hand one dictionary, one thesaurus, one grammar and punctuation book, and three writing guides (the aforementioned King, Strunk and White, and one on Nanowrimo which I just thought would be cool to have since I've been a long-time participant--not that I follow any of Baty's suggestions). And frankly, that's probably all I need to have.
Onesome: Fife-- Barney? ...a musical instrument? ...the number after 'four'? What came to mind when you saw this week's title?
Musical instrument. Specifically, what came to mind was a medieval ensemble playing in a Renaissance fair. Or something like that.
Twosome: and--do you recall a painting of a fife and drum set with a flag? No? Maybe one of our American History majors can link it in...
I vaguely remember the painting. I don't remember the artist though.
Threesome: Drum--lines? Do you love them? ...or do you even know they exist? I'm wondering if this is an "Eastern" thing...
Why is drumming an "Eastern" thing? Sure, there are Japanese taiko drummers, but aren't there drums in marching bands too? Marching bands solely consisting of drummers? Oil drummers in the Caribbean? There are drums and percussion instruments in every culture.
I like certain kinds of drumming, but it's not one of those things which I go crazy over or even consider seeking out.
...containing many books I have not read. The following are "the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded." (via Dustbury)
Bold = books I've read Underline = books I've read for school Italics = books I've started but haven't finished/are in the middle of reading * (asterisk) = books I own but have not started reading yet
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Anna Karenina* Crime and Punishment Catch-22 One Hundred Years of Solitude Wuthering Heights The Silmarillion* Life of Pi: a novel* The Name of the Rose Don Quixote Moby Dick Ulysses Madame Bovary The Odyssey Pride and Prejudice Jane Eyre* The Tale of Two Cities* The Brothers Karamazov Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies War and Peace Vanity Fair The Time Traveler’s Wife The Iliad Emma The Blind Assassin The Kite Runner Mrs. Dalloway Great Expectations American Gods A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Atlas Shrugged Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books Memoirs of a Geisha Middlesex* Quicksilver Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West The Canterbury Tales The Historian: a novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Love in the Time of Cholera Brave New World The Fountainhead Foucault’s Pendulum Middlemarch Frankenstein The Count of Monte Cristo Dracula A Clockwork Orange Anansi Boys* The Once and Future King The Grapes of Wrath The Poisonwood Bible : a novel 1984 Angels & Demons* The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise) The Satanic Verses Sense and Sensibility The Picture of Dorian Gray Mansfield Park One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest To the Lighthouse Tess of the D'Urbervilles Oliver Twist Gulliver’s Travels Les Misérables The Corrections The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time* Dune The Prince The Sound and the Fury Angela's Ashes: a memoir The God of Small Things A People's History of the United States: 1492-present Cryptonomicon* Neverwhere A Confederacy of Dunces A Short History of Nearly Everything Dubliners The Unbearable Lightness of Being Beloved Slaughterhouse-Five The Scarlet Letter Eats, Shoots & Leaves The Mists of Avalon Oryx and Crake: a novel Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed* Cloud Atlas The Confusion Lolita Persuasion Northanger Abbey The Catcher in the Rye On the Road The Hunchback of Notre Dame Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values The Aeneid Watership Down Gravity's Rainbow The Hobbit In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences White Teeth Treasure Island David Copperfield The Three Musketeers
I finally get the software working, but now all my bookmarks on Firefox are wiped out after my last restart. And the two programs aren't even related to each other...
Well, at least I have all my most important sites saved on an html file.
Anyways, on an unrelated note: Sometimes when I leave my landline plugged in (most of the time I don't--people who really want to get a hold of me use e-mail), I get these targeted telemarketing calls in Mandarin. I tell them I don't speak Chinese, they stammer, and then I hang up. And I totally know why I get those phone calls too. It's because of my last name.
Of course, if they knew how the English transliteration of my last name came about (i.e. Vietnamization of the Cantonese pronunciation), the last thing they should be doing would be calling in Mandarin.
I hate calling tech support. After calling an 800 number, I get transferred to tech support. I try to state my problem as succinctly as possible. They cut me off and go into a condescending spiel that is of absolutely no help at all. Once there's a break when they're taking a breath to rant some more, I reply "Okay, okay, I'll try that. Thanks." They finish their spiel smugly. I say my thanks yet again even though I feel far from thankful and end the call. On the off chance that their directions do work, I try it. Of course, the suggestions have never worked and I'm completely averse to calling again. I wonder what drives them over the edge--maybe to them I sound as clueless as the kind of person who didn't even check if the computer was plugged in.
The Arcanum by Janet Gleeson - It's eighteenth century Europe, the start of the Age of Reason, and a young apothecary's assistant performs a trick, apparently turning lead into gold. This bit of slight-of-hand eventually lands Johann Bottger into the hands of Augustus the Strong and life-long "imprisonment." But between his efforts in transmuting gold, Bottger eventually hit upon the formula for recreating Chinese porcelain--a different sort of gold that nonetheless fattened Augustus' pockets. Gleeson's account of the development of Meissen porcelain and the secrecy behind its formula or arcanum can be pretty suspenseful at times. As progress in European porcelain crept onward, one can't help wonder which greedy backstabber was going to hit next. I thought this was a fascinating intersection between chemical science and history (and would probably make a kickass film of period drama--I mean, it's got everything--sex, violence, espionage, grudges, greed, you name it). Highly recommended.
Escape from the Antarctic by Ernest Shackleton - I like very few stories which pit man against nature--unless it's something completely unavoidable like man against disease. Unfortunately, the majority of the more famous nature stories which get made into movies feature guys climbing mountains. Completely uninteresting. The whole subliminal "mine is bigger than yours!" thing totally doesn't work for me. Survival stories, however, have held a certain morbid fascination ever since I was introduced to Gary Paulsen's Hatchet when I was ten. I think it's because there are more factors coming into play other than something like falling off a mountain. There's exposure, temperature, weather, starvation, psychological issues, lack of navigation or rescue, and infighting. Escape from the Antarctic has all of these things although the sparse prose only hinted at the psychology and infighting. As the first World War ravaged Europe, Ernest Shackleton led the Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition in hopes of crossing the Antarctic. There were two parties, one which laid out supply dumps and the second which would make the crossing. The second party was marooned on Elephant Island after ice crushed their ship the Endurance, 800 miles away from the nearest settlement, at the onset of winter. At this point, Shackleton made the desperate decision to split the group: the less fit men would remain at base camp while Shackleton and five other men would seek help. Shackleton's account is matter-of-fact and a testament to his leadership. But it does not detract from the amazing feat that these men managed to get help across 800 miles in nothing more than a twenty-foot boat.
"That's correct. You're well on your way to becoming a biologist."
"Then how come your stomach's so big?"
"That's because I'm fat."
"How come you're fat?"
"I'm fat because I eat too much. I take in more calories than my body needs so [insert long-winded jargon laden explanation] which upsets my metabolic homeostasis."
Tangled Bank #104 is up at Dammit Jim! I see there are a fair number of bacteria-related posts--which totally makes my microbe-loving heart swoon. My only excuse for not posting this earlier is that I've been swamped with end of the semester exams, projects, presentations, and all that other insane grad student whatnot.
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Lunch is supposed to be stress-free. This afternoon, I was perusing the student paper intending to be amused by typical undergraduate silliness when I came upon the opinion section. One of the undergraduate journalists wrote an anti-science screed which painted science as godless, evil, and morally corrupt.
To say that I'm livid is an understatement. This is the first time I'm even considering writing a letter to the editor.
It is true that science is godless. Science isn't a religion. But godlessness has nothing to do with evil or morality. Science gives us technology that could be used for bad purposes, but it can also be used for good. In the end, it's a tool--nothing more. It's like a screwdriver. In person A's hands, the screwdriver might be used to build a house for a low income family. In person B's hands, it might be used as a murder weapon. This doesn't make the screwdriver good or evil. If you want to blame something, blame the people wielding the tools and not the tools themselves.
Anyways, the main point of that article was that scientists are going to try to do things simply because they could. And the author implied that this curiosity is morally suspect and that it's a slippery slope towards a future where humanity is enslaving sentient chimeras created from test tubes. Man, it sounds like he's read too many dystopian sci-fi novels. At any rate, it really ticked me off that scientific curiosity was labeled as bad. If that was true, most people today would be longing for the Dark Ages.
I'm sitting in the front of the class, minding my own business, when another student makes a snarky remark and one of the professors in class totally blows his top. I don't know about the other people in that room, but I was cringing downward in my seat, making no eye contact, and mentally plugging my ears to the ranting. More cringing ensued when the student was kicked out of class.
Quick! It’s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you’re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do??
And, no, you did NOT have time to grab your bookbag, or the book next to your bed. You were . . . grocery shopping when you got the call and have nothing with you but your wallet and your passport (which you fortuitously brought with you in case they asked for ID in the ethnic food aisle). This is hypothetical, remember….
Well, if it's an emergency, I probably won't be in any frame of mind to be reading. Most likely, I'd be sitting around, twiddling my thumbs, and tuning out airport music.
But if I did have a yen for reading and my only option would be one of the airport newsstands (disregarding the closest airport which has absolutely nothing at all since it only has ONE gate), I'd probably go to the magazines first. Depending on what's available and what is closest to me, I'll look at some of the science-y mags like National Geographic or Discover and then maybe some of the more high profile news-lit magazines like The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly and Harper's. And then I'll browse any cooking magazines. As for novels, airports usually only carry bestsellers and other mainstream books which I tend to avoid. I also avoid newspapers--simply because they're incredibly unwieldy.
Onesome: The magic-- of Spring? Has it started yet where you are? ...or if you're 'down under', how is Autumn progressing?
Spring? Sure, although I still half expect it to snow.
Twosome: month of-- transition? Are you looking to be out of school? ...to have the kids out of school? No? Heh. How about just thinking about where you want to go this Summer? ...maybe within walking distance, -no?
After the following week is over, I'll be able to relax--a little. As for the summer, well, it's going to be kind of stress filled since I will still be in school.
Threesome: May-- I ask you if you know which song the title for today's piece was taken from? I'm thinking Laanba has a chance at it, but any fan of Dumbledore's original actor might know it...
I have no idea. Someone with more time on their hands might be able to google it up.
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