Occasionally Wright

Commas, Semicolons and Full Stops

Yesterday at work during a mid-afternoon lull I pulled out a recently borrowed book to kill some time.

"What are you reading?" asked my co-worker.
"A book about punctuation."
"No- really. What are you reading?"
"Seriously. I'm reading a book about punctuation. It's really funny. It was a #1 New York Times Bestseller."

I've never been a punctuation or grammar stickler but I might be by the time I finish reading Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss which is by far the most entertaining book on the subject of punctuation that I've ever read. I might also end up emailing my thesis panel who insisted that I was wrong when I placed punctuation outside of quotation marks at the end of sentences. According to Truss it's not incorrect to do so, although it's a British thing. So I wasn't grammatically wrong; I was being culturally inappropriate.

For the record the preceding sentence may be the first time in my life that I have ever used a semicolon. I thought I'd try it out and see what all the fuss is about.

And by the way, Oxford commas are stupid.

Glad to Rediscover Gladwell

I read The Tipping Point sometime back in the fall and have been waiting to find a cheap or borrowed copy of Blink to read. I'm looking forward to reading simply because whether I agree with everything he says or not Malcolm Gladwell is a great writer. Not great in the great literary sense but great in the sense that he's easy to understanding and incredibly adept at getting his point across without dumbing things down. He's clear and at the same time interesting and entertaining.

Given all of that I'm not sure why I forgot that he's a regular contributor to The New Yorker. I also don't know why I haven't bothered to track down any of his online articles (many of which are at his site- gladwell.com). Some of his more recent stuff can be found through Google and I killed some of the lulls at work last night reading his thought provoking piece on plagiarism.

Apparently there are those out there in blogworld who think Gladwell is overrated and simply states and restates the obvious. Well, if it's so obvious why aren't they becoming famous writing the same stuff? There are doers and there are those who complain about the doers because they didn't do it first.

History of Everything

To those with anything more than a passing interest in science I highly recomend Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. It's a very accessible and at times very funny book on the history of, well, nearly everything. I'm only 62 pages in and he has already given the general history of astronomy, geology and explained the relative size and emptiness of space. I'm having trouble putting it down.

It's now available in paperback, by the way and would be well worth picking up. Bryson has also written In a In a Sunburned Country (often seen on discount tables at Chapters/Indigo), A Walk in the Woods, and Notes From a Big Country, among other.

Douglas Adams on Technology

If you haven't read The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams you really should. It's a collection of many of his essays and newspaper columns published over the years as well as various previously unpublished thoughts and the beginning of the last book he was working on before he passed away. The book is absolutely outstanding and was published posthumously.

Anyway I pulled it out last night before I went to bed and read a few pieces, one of which was this brilliant insight into how people view Technology:

"I've come up with this set of rules that describes our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

Do yourself a favour and pick up the book. It also includes a very good article on the proper way to make tea. I don't actually drink or make tea but the article was wildly entertaining.

Book Help

I foresee a lot of OC Transpo bus rides in my near future and thus I need a book or two to read. My current list has been finished and I'm looking for more stuff, fiction or non.

I've recently completed:

• The Game by Ken Dryden (Interesting read for a hockey fan)

• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (great book about how trends are started and the key elements of spreading trends or epidemics

• Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn (the narrator has telepathic conversations with a gorilla and discovers that humanity is in the mess it's in because humans don't follow the laws of nature)

• The Da Vince Code by Dan Brown (horribly overrated but good and really the same book as Angels and Demons in a different setting)

I've put in a request for Romeo Dallaire's book on the Rwanda crisis but I'm gong to be waiting a while for that one. Does anyone else have any suggestions?

Reading List

Books currently signed out on my library card:

Moneyball: The Art of winning an Unfair Game by Micheal Lewis (finished it, review coming soon)
The Game by Ken Dryden, MP

Books for which I have put in requests with the Ottawa Public Library system:

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (I'm down to number 183 on the waiting list after being added at number 580 or so over 2 months ago)
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business,Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki and Erik Singer
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

Everything on the request list is there at the advice, suggestion or recommendation of someone I know or read online.

The Quitter

I've liked Robert Service and his work ever since I first heard/saw "The Cremation of Sam McGee" performed back in grade 4 or 5 in Mt Uniacke, NS. A few years ago I got The Poems of Robert Service for Christmas and at various times I've enjoyed pulling the book out and taking inspiration and encouragement from his words. Today I give you "The Quitter," a copy of which was posted to my bulletin board beside my computer in my office while I wrote my thesis in grad school. The first verse might be a little tricky to relate too but the second and third are pretty universal. Enjoy.

"The Quitter" by Robert Service

When you're lost in the Wild, and you're scared as a child,
And Death looks you bang in the eye,
And you're sore as a boil, it's according to Hoyle
To cock your revolver and . . . die.
But the Code of a Man says: "Fight all you can,"
And self-dissolution is barred.
In hunger and woe, oh, it's easy to blow . . .
It's the hell-served-for-breakfast that's hard.

"You're sick of the game!" Well, now, that's a shame.
You're young and you're brave and you're bright.
"You've had a raw deal!" I know -- but don't squeal,
Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight.
It's the plugging away that will win you the day,
So don't be a piker, old pard!
Just draw on your grit; it's so easy to quit:
It's the keeping-your-chin-up that's hard.

It's easy to cry that you're beaten -- and die;
It's easy to crawfish and crawl;
But to fight and to fight when hope's out of sight --
Why, that's the best game of them all!
And though you come out of each gruelling bout,
All broken and beaten and scarred,
Just have one more try -- it's dead easy to die,
It's the keeping-on-living that's hard.

Name Game

In the novel The Saints of Big Harbour by Lynn Coady one of the character ponders the differences between what people from his town in Nova Scotia call the country to the south of Canada and what residents of that country call it.

The full name of course is the United States of America but nobody says "I'm going to the United States of America for vacation" or "I'm from the United States of America."

So where are you from and what do you call it? I can think of at least three names I use and a couple more that I don't but I don't want to influence anyone else's responses. I'll post mine later. Super bonus points if you can guess what name Lynn Coady used in The Saints of Big Harbour as the stereotypical for our southern neighbour.

Overheard on the Island

While home on PEI I picked up a great little book by Island author, professor, newspaper columnist and general wiseguy David Weale. Overheard on the Island is made up completely of, well, things he has overheard on the Island. A lot of them are pretty funny and almost all of them give insight into how people think on PEI so I've decided that when I don't have much else to post I'll just post one of the quotes from Overheard on the Island. Does that make me lazy? Yup, but what are you going to do about it? For starters:

"It used to be the custom to hold your breath when you drove across the railway tracks or across a bridge... I guess that's not such a good idea anymore."

Beach Reading

As I wandered around Vanier yesterday after voting I eventually found myself at the St. Laurant Shopping Centre where I picked up a novel for my trip to Myrtle Beach. I'm anticipating a signifiacant amount of time laying on the beach so I fiogured I should have someting good to read. I have John Steinbeck's East of Eden signed out from the library but I have a suspicion it might get a bit too heavy for beach reading so I found someting that should be a bit lighter.

So I picked up the paperback edition of Angels and Demons by Dan Brown which is a prequel of sorts to The Da Vince Code. I've come across a lot of great reviews of The Da Vinci Code and I fully intend to read it at some point but there's a huge waiting list at the library for it and I'm not shelling out $30 for the hardcover, so I figured this would be just as good. Has anyone read either one? How about East of Eden?