Review: Yes, I Could Care Less: How to Be a Language Snob Without Being a Jerk

Reviewer: Kelsey
Author: Bill Walsh
Format: Paperback
Pages: 304
Rating: 8 out of 10 (for interesting and learning); 6 out of 10 (for entertainment value in general)

Summary (I care about Goodreads): Calling all language sticklers—and those who love to argue with them! Usage maven Bill Walsh expounds (rather than expands) on his pet peeves in the long-awaited follow-up (note the hyphens, please) to The Elephants of Style and Lapsing Into a Comma.

Could you care less? Does bad grammar “literally” make your head explode? Test your need for this book with these sentences: 

"Katrina misplaced many residents of New Orleans from their homes."

"Mark had a full schedule of meetings. His first of the day was a small businessman, followed by a high schoolteacher."

"Betty was 100% percent wrong."

 My Thoughts: [I'm concerned that if this author reads this he will find something wrong with my writing but maybe he would be kind enough to not say too much about it. Here's to hoping that he is too busy to read book reviews.]

This book was hilarious. It got off to a scary start. Some of the topics at the beginning I found myself disagreeing with but I stuck it out. It was worth it. This author has A+ sarcasm and I learned things from this book too! I find myself suddenly into words and language and grammar (and generally sounding smarter) so this book fit into that perfectly. I'm well aware that most of what I learned won't stick in my brain but I also am certain that a lot of it will. I think that it was a fantastic idea to read this right before going back to school but it was also just funny. Did I mention that already? I thought that a book like this would be plain old boring but it wasn't. The examples were memorable and I laughed out loud at his comments. I found the tweets at the top of the page (from the author's twitter) to be just as entertaining as the content of the novel.

I would recommend this book to language snobs and language jerks and those of us who just like words and language but lack the jerk side of it. English majors, this one is for you too! I think that anyone interested in language could get something out of this book. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Could you care less? Personally, I couldn't.

Review: On Beauty and Being Just

Reviewer: Kelsey

Author: Elaine Scarry

Format: Paperback

Pages: 134

Rating: 6 out of 10

Summary (Goodreads is beautiful): Have we become beauty-blind? For two decades or more in the humanities, various political arguments have been put forward against beauty: that it distracts us from more important issues; that it is the handmaiden of privilege; and that it masks political interests. In "On Beauty and Being Just" Elaine Scarry not only defends beauty from the political arguments against it but also argues that beauty does indeed press us toward a greater concern for justice. Taking inspiration from writers and thinkers as diverse as Homer, Plato, Marcel Proust, Simone Weil, and Iris Murdoch as well as her own experiences, Scarry offers up an elegant, passionate manifesto for the revival of beauty in our intellectual work as well as our homes, museums, and classrooms.
Scarry argues that our responses to beauty are perceptual events of profound significance for the individual and for society. Presenting us with a rare and exceptional opportunity to witness fairness, beauty assists us in our attention to justice. The beautiful object renders fairness, an abstract concept, concrete by making it directly available to our sensory perceptions. With its direct appeal to the senses, beauty stops us, transfixes us, fills us with a "surfeit of aliveness." In so doing, it takes the individual away from the center of his or her self-preoccupation and thus prompts a distribution of attention outward toward others and, ultimately, she contends, toward ethical fairness.
Scarry, author of the landmark "The Body in Pain" and one of our bravest and most creative thinkers, offers us here philosophical critique written with clarity and conviction as well as a passionate plea that we change the way we think about beauty.

Slight disclaimer: I read this book for class...

Thoughts: This novel really succeeded in making me think. It was easy to understand and interesting. This book was my favourite of the five I read for my intro to philosophy class. It examines the ways beauty creates a better world and how it can encourage us to be more moral. I had never considered that beauty was the reason we try to recreate things, including creating children. 

It was short and very educational...ish so there isn't much I can say except that if you are interested in beauty, justice, philosophy as topics to read about, you should check this book out. I am currently looking into another one of Scarry's works for pleasure instead of for school. That is a pretty strong testimony in itself, I suppose.