Eats, Shoots and Leaves

When my friends recommend books to me, that is usually all it takes to put them on my reading list, but when Eats, Shoots and Leaves was recommended to me, I was reluctant. She's a great friend, but she is also one of those writing people. That is certainly not a bad thing, in fact, I'm a little jealous of those people. In complete honesty though, when a person who uses colons with confidence recommends a book on punctuation, I am not expecting a real page turner. I thought to myself, "Ya, that is something I should probably read." When it was recommended by a respected faculty member, I thought, "Ya know, I should probably buy that. I'm more likely to read it if it is lying around the house." When I finally accepted that I was going to be writing a lot of cover letters this semester, I thought, "Now is the time. Where did I put that book."

I was in for a great surprise. This has been the most entertaining book I have read all year (I'll even say academic year so we can start that back in August.) I was expecting so dry grammar rules and punctuation talk. The first night I was reading this, I laughed so much that my husband came in to see if I was crying. Don't believe me? I don't blame you I was skeptical too. Let me share with you a couple short passages.

"...But to be honest western systems of punctuation were damned unsatisfactory for the next five hundred years until one man - one fabulous Venetian printer - finally wrestled with the issue and pinned it to the mat. That man was Aldus Manutius the Elder (1450-1515) and I will happily admit I hadn't heard of him until about a year ago, but am not absolutely kicking myself that I never volunteered to have his babies."

"If there is one lesson to be learned from this book, it is that there is never a dull moment in the world of punctuation. One minute the semicolon is gracefully joining sentences together in a flattering manner, and the next it is calling a bunch of brawling commas to attention."

"In the family of punctuation, where the [period] is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practices the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets over excited and breaks things and laughs too loudly."

In short, if this is the type of book that will take several recommendations for you to read it, add me to the list of people who are telling you to check it out. It is punctuation for everyone.