Richard Lederer
Paperback | Pages: 192 pages Rating: 4.1 | 1735 Users | 142 Reviews
Present Based On Books Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language
| Title | : | Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language |
| Author | : | Richard Lederer |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 192 pages |
| Published | : | August 5th 1989 by Dell (first published 1987) |
| Categories | : | Humor. Nonfiction. Humanities. Language. Writing. Reference |
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I have learned so much from this book. Most importantly, I've learned that what I thought was a regional dialect of Northeastern Pennsylvania called Heynabonics is actually a nation-wide sub-language called "Slurvian." I think this means that I'm bi-lingual now. This was a cute, though disturbing, read. I laughed until I cried in the beginning section, reading through students' essays and seeing their mutilation of facts, but towards the middle of the book, it just kind of lost me. Yes, there were subject/verb disagreements, unintentional paraprosdokians, misplaced modifiers, and dangling participles but often I just didn't find the examples all that funny. And some of them, despite all disclaimers to the contrary, seemed faked. Or slightly modified to increase the irony and make them funnier, at the very least. After about the 1/3 mark, I think I smiled and maybe chuckled a few times, but the uncontrollable laughter that I was promised, and which I experienced in the beginning, just didn't carry through. Still, this was a quick read, and most of it was amusing even if I didn't spend the entire book in tears of laughter, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.Details Books As Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language
| ISBN: | 044020352X (ISBN13: 9780440203520) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Rating Based On Books Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language
Ratings: 4.1 From 1735 Users | 142 ReviewsAppraise Based On Books Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language
As a teacher, I began to gather linguistic jewels many years ago, mainly from my students' compositions and tests, but sometimes from media or overheard conversations in the street. I intended, just like Richard Lederer, to make someday a book out of them, but I never imagined this book as a mere anthology at the end of the day, how long can you laugh while reading page after page of jokes? How many spoons of honey can you eat before becoming sick? In other words, the real challenge is to seekThis is what I refer to as a "fettucine alfredo" book. It starts out delightfully. "The World According to Student Bloopers" is hysterical. However, as when eating fettucine alfredo, somewhere around halfway through, continuing begins to amount to a low-grade form of torture. Mostly the author tries to hard. I found myself chuckling for about one out of every five attempts at humor in the latter chapters, and the final chapter on "Slurvians" was the worst part of the book.
Everyone in the education field should read Lederer's essay, "World History According to Student Bloopers." Anyone who has proofread their own kids' essays will relate.I still laugh outloud all these years later at the "defeat of the Spanish Armadillo."
This is great - the author, after many years teaching English, presents the weirdest and funniest bloopers his students have come up with in the various things they wrote in his classes. The picture on the cover, of Shakespeare grimacing in horror, is apt - you can almost hear the great writers of Western history screaming "No, no, make it stop!" in response to some of the butcheries performed on their works. I laughed out loud on more pages than not.
Basically a long list of funny things that students, newspapers, signs said. Some had me laugh out loud but I had to take it in small doses like someone who tells continuous jokes or puns. Examples: headline: CHILD'S STOOL GREAT FOR USE IN GARDEN. misspellings: "Full Coarse Meals" or student papers: "Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100ft clipper." You get the idea. I found the book and spent the right amount of money on it.
This is fun casual read. Share bits of it with your most punny friends. Lederer is a great columnist, and this book is a natural fit for his followers.
You can't go home again :(I read this when it was first released, in 19mumblemumble, and laughed until I cried. Now I find Lederer condescending and annoying. I hate the sections with grammatical errors from "citizens applying for payments from a state welfare agency" and "actual [school] excuse notes". Listen to Lederer snicker because "an astonishing number of grownups blithely go about murdering the King's English without any inkling they are committing a serious crime."Did not like.
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