Unabashedly Bookish

[#1]

Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl, is big. Her Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing  was a New York Times bestseller, she's got a huge blog following, and thousands listen to her popular podcasts and NPR appearances.

Her latest, The Grammar Devotional, just hit stores yesterday.

Like me, Mignon is quick to "point out when something is a style and not a rule." (Oft noted in the sometimes contentious but always entertaining comments sections of the linguistics-oriented and descripivist Language Log blog.)

She's not afraid to come down decisively with yes/no answers to common but occasionally thorny questions. I agree with her brisk and expert advice on such items as introductory commas, appositive commas, mass and count nouns, and the like. Her witty unravelling of the confusion around word pairs such as gorilla/guerilla, wreaked/wracked, and the like is clear and gentle, and the Language Rock Stars on Wednesdays, quizzes on Fridays, and games on Saturdays are entertaining tidbits.

My only quibble is with the "devotional" organization; tips are presented daily, divided into 52 weeks and labeled Monday thru Sunday, so presumably the book can be reread, day by day, for many years. Sounds like a Page-a-Day you say? Perish the thought!

My dark suspicion is that this book WAS one of the Page-a-Day calendars, which traditionally go on sale in October. (Right when this book goes on sale . . .) But some think that when all book sales, along with most retail, took a lemminglike dive off a cliff with the October 08 financial meltdown, the dead sales of Page-a-Days reflected a falloff in that format's popularity and not just the October 08 lemming dive in everything and anything retail. So Page-a-Days are out; Devotionals are in.

Whatever the reason, the devotional format is sort of fun, but it makes it hard to find things. A lovely and most welcome index helps, but the format still strikes me as a bit unnatural for the material. At least the eBook will be searchable!

Nevertheless, I'd still be happy to sit down with Grammar Girl for a nice grammar chat. Barring the chance that I'll be consorting with the famous any time soon, I'll take the Grammar Devotional, and I confidently advise anyone with grammar questions to do the same.

[#2]

Ellen, until I 'met' you here at UB, I worshipped only Grammar Girl.  Now I eagerly look forward to your columns, too. Since I have oh, so many grammar issues w/which to contend, I find two isn't one grammar expert too many, but perhaps several too few.  Oh, dear.  I believe you get the picture.