Both a swift introduction for grammar rookies and an enlightening review and update for the veterans.
A celebrated historian of the English language takes us on an entertaining stroll through the history of our grammar—from the beginning to last week.
As prolific as he is knowledgeable about our language, Crystal has written with erudition and wit about subjects as varied as the pronunciation of Shakespeare’s English (The Oxford Dictionary of Original Shakespearean Pronunciation, 2016) and the language’s odd spelling (Spell It Out, 2013). Here, the author has several related intents: to explain what grammar is (and isn’t), provide a history of our grammar, illustrate some common grammatical issues, show the varieties of English, chide (gently) our many unyielding prescriptivists (he does call them “pedants” a couple of times), and make general recommendations about the teaching and testing of grammar. The chapters are brief and tightly focused, many followed by an interlude that deals with a specific issue that lies, only slightly, outside the text—e.g., the ways we pluralize our nouns and some stories of the earliest grammarians. Crystal’s prose is generally light and accessible, though there are times (see the chapter about the evolution of English from Old to today) when his diction and discussion could dissuade the timorous. Some fussy readers may be surprised (or pleased?) to see his use of “mindset” and “refers back,” but he displays a similar joy in “catching” some recent grammar and usage absolutists who commit the very errors they condemn. Throughout, the author is a gifted, agile, and amusing teacher, traits we see in his passages about how it would go if we were able to chat with Beowulf, Chaucer, and Shakespeare. He also shows how prescriptive grammar rose and fell, replaced by descriptive, and how much standardized grammar testing for youngsters is flawed.
Both a swift introduction for grammar rookies and an enlightening review and update for the veterans.Pub Date: June 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-19-066057-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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