Category Archives: In Books

My comments on books by other people.

Why Write?

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Money.

Author Mickey Spillane died last week at age 88. He was the creator of hard boiled detective Mike Hammer.

I don’t recall reading any Mickey Spillane, but I must have. I’m a huge fan of hard boiled detective fiction — a la Chandler and Hammett. But reviewers don’t usually use the names Spillane, Chandler, and Hammett in the same sentence unless it is to comment on how Spillane fails to stack up to the two masters of the genre.

Spillane’s writing has been called “hard boiled boilerplate,” full of cliches and odd visualizations. The critics were not kind to him. But he didn’t write to please the critics. He wrote to make money, as CNN’s obituary piece confirms:

Spillane, a bearish man who wrote on an old manual Smith Corona, always claimed he didn’t care about reviews. He considered himself a “writer” as opposed to an “author,” defining a writer as someone whose books sell.

“This is an income-generating job,” he told The Associated Press during a 2001 interview. “Fame was never anything to me unless it afforded me a good livelihood.”

Which got me thinking.

I’ve often been criticized by writing acquaintances — you know, the folks who want to be authors and are always working on short stories and novels but never actually publishing them — for “selling out.” In their eyes, writing non-fiction (computer how-to books, of all things) isn’t quite as impressive as creating art by writing fiction.

But they obviously don’t understand why I write computer books. It isn’t because I love composing sentences like: “Choose File > Open. The Open dialog appears. Locate and select the file you want to open. Click Open.” It’s because I like to eat, have a roof over my head, and buy cool toys like helicopters.

Yes, it’s true. I write computer books for the same reason most people go to the office every day. The same reason Mickey Spillane wrote books with titles like The Erection Set.

As Spillane once said,

“I have no fans. You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friends.”

Ah, if only I could have as many friends like that.

Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies

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“A guide to language for fun and spite.”

Grammar Snobs CoverI just started reading June Casagrande’s book, Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies. I picked it up the other day at Books, Inc., a wonderful independent bookstore in Mountain View, CA.

Ms. Casagrande is the author of a weekly grammar column in a community news supplement to the Los Angeles Times. Over the years, she has gotten many letters from “grammar snobs” who go out of their way to rudely correct her grammar. In most cases, these snobs are simply wrong. Her book is an attempt to educate the people who care about grammar about the grammar rules that matter — as well as a bunch that don’t. Armed with this information, anyone can fight back when attacked by a grammar snob.

Although I’m only four chapters into the book, I’m thoroughly enjoying it. The reason: Ms. Casagrande’s excellent example sentences. Some of them are hilariously funny. And the book uses examples from a pop culture, including (so far) The Simpsons and Star Trek (the original). That help makes the subject matter approachable for the average reader. In other words, you don’t need to be a grammar snob or word nerd — or a wannabe — to enjoy the book.

The book is both educational and fun to read — my favorite kind of book. The short chapters make it something you can pick up and put down whenever time permits. (Something my husband might enjoy as bathroom reading, if he liked to read about grammar. Alas, he doesn’t.)

So if you’re wondering what I’m doing today, as the patio thermometer reads 106.5° F (at 1:10 PM) and Mike has just gone off to see The Da Vinci Code again (he thinks the movie might be better if viewed from a seat farther back in the theater) — you know. I’m learning how to fight back when attacked by one of those mean-spirited grammar snobs.

Vocabulary Words

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It’s never too late to expand your vocabulary.

I learned to read in the summer between first and second grades.

I’d gotten the basics with the Dick and Jane books in first grade. Back in those days (the mid 60s), kids weren’t learning to read at home with their parents, by watching Sesame Street, or in kindergarten. It was first grade and beyond or pretty much nothing.

Unless you had a thirst for more, which I did. I wasn’t a popular kid — I had a few local neighborhood friends, but that was it. At school, I was one of the outcast kids — a nerd, as we’d say today. I wasn’t a physical kid. Kick the Can and Running Bases was the extent of my athleticism. So what else was left? Reading.

After discovering the joys of reading, I was hungry for more. My mother recommended that I read the Nancy Drew books that she’d grown up with. Nancy Drew books are a big step up from Fun with Dick and Jane. I’d ride my bike (without a helmet on!) the mile or so to the local library (in those days, a kid could get around pretty good by herself, without fear of predators), take out a book, and ride home. I’d then annoy my mother for the next few days by asking her every single word I didn’t know.

There were a lot of them.

Finally, she had enough. “Sound out the word like you learned in school,” she instructed. “Get the meaning from the sentence.” It took some practice, but pretty soon I got the hang of it.

I figured out that Nancy’s pumps were shoes and that a chum was a friend. Of course, I also thought the word determined was pronounced deter-mined (short e in dEter, long I in mIned). That went on for a few years. Nancy Drew was always determining things and my “sound it out” skills simply failed me for that one.

I enjoyed the books and my reading skills improved. In my second grade year, a test showed I had fifth grade reading skills. In fifth grade, I achieved the highest score ever for all of New Jersey on a reading and comprehension test.

I might be bragging a little here, but that’s not my purpose. [Steps up onto soapbox.] My main purpose in relating this story is to show that it is possible for a youngster to get involved in reading to the point where reading becomes a self-sustaining task. The student reads because she likes to. In an effort to find more interesting things to read, she teaches herself the vocaulary in books consdered far beyond her age level. This, in turn, opens her to new ideas and turns on the wheels of free and independent thought. And it does incredible things for a student’s writing skills. After all, how can you be a bad writer when you consume so many expamples of good (or at least acceptable) writing? [Steps off soapbox.]

Almost forty years have passed. I still read as much as I can. I always have book on the table beside my bed — something to page through before passing out at the end of the day. Some days, when I have time and a good book at hand, I’ll get into what I call a “reading marathon.” That’s when I pick up a book and pretty much don’t put it down until it’s done. Otherwise, I’ll busy myself in the morning or evening with current events articles from Web sites I like or pieces in the few magazines I subscribe to (AOPA Pilot, Technology Today, Rotor & Wing, Vertical, and The Virginia Quarterly Review.

I’ve been concerned lately about my vocabulary. It seems to me that it just isn’t growing anymore. This has become all the more apparent as I read and hear words that I’m not quite sure of. Yes, I can still figure out what a word means by the sentence it’s in or the context in which it is used. But you have to really know the word to get the full meaning of what the author intended.

The word ubiquitous is a great example. Have you been listening to the news and commentary lately? I hear this word almost daily these days. Yet I’d never read a formal definition of the word and was left on my own to figure out what it meant. At first I wasn’t too concerned, but the more ubiquitous the word ubiquitous got, it became clear to me that I was missing something.

I bought a vocabulary CD and a few vocabulary books. But the trouble with these tools is that they present the words some author thinks you don’t know but should. My problem is that I knew about half the words, was curious about a quarter of the words, and didn’t give a damn about the rest.

So I started writing down words I’m not completely sure of as I encounter them in books and articles. Yesterday, as I read P.D. James’s Unnatural Causes, I wrote down 23 of them.

Oxford New American English DictionaryNow I’ll use the Dictionary application that comes with Mac OS X Tiger to look them up. The Dictionary in my Mac OS X installation has words and definitions from The Oxford American Dictionaries. (I usually use the Dictionary widget, which has the same source of information, but I want to do some copying and pasting here, so I’ll stick with the app.)

Learn with me.

cosset: verb; care for and protect in an overindulgent way.

somnambulant: adjective; sleepwalking

gules: noun; red, as a heraldic tincture

vulpine: adjective; of or relating to a fox or foxes

spurious: adjective; not being what it purports to be; false or fake

histrionics: noun; exaggerated dramatic behavior designed to attract attention; dramatic performance; theater

innocuous: adjective; not harmful or offensive

lubricious: adjective; offensively displaying or intended to arouse sexual desire.

viva voce: noun; Brit. an oral examination, typically for an academic qualification

numinous: adjective; having a strong religious or spiritual quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of a divinity

helot: noun; a member of a class of serfs in ancient Sparta, intermediate in status between slaves and citizens

moue: noun; a pouting expression used to convey annoyance or distaste

Eumenides: Greek Mythology; a name given to the Furies. The Eumenides probably originated as well-disposed deities of fertility, whose name was given to the Furies either by confusion or euphemistically.

capitulation: noun; the action of surrendering or ceasing to resist an opponent or demand

syncopate: displace the beats or accents in (music or a rhythm) so that strong beats become weak and vice versa

doldrums: plural noun; low spirits; a feeling of boredom or depression

amorphous: adjective; without a clearly defined shape or form

éclat: noun; brilliant display or effect

miasma: noun; poetic/literary; a highly unpleasant or unhealthy smell or vapor

truculent: adjective; eager or quick to argue or fight; aggressively defiant

shibboleth: noun; a custom, principle, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, esp. a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no longer important

innate: adjective; inborn; natural

indolent: adjective; wanting to avoid activity or exertion; lazy

Unnatural Causes

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An Adam Dalgliesh mystery by P.D. James.

Unnatural CausesI mentioned in a previous post that I’d taken two novels with me to the hospital for something to do while recovering from surgery. In that same post, I also mentioned that drugs kept me unable to read for the entire time I was there. I caught up yesterday by reading one of the two books I’d lugged down to Phoenix and back: Unnatural Causes by P.D. James.

I’m a big reader of mysteries, but for some reason I’ve always shied away from P.D. James. I think I must have had a bad P.D. James experience in my past. You know what I mean. You get a book from the library and have every intention of reading it, but when you open the book and begin to read, the book fails to grasp your attention. You put it aside, planning to pick it up later to read it, and wind up just returning it to the library — late, of course — with a new idea in the back of your mind: you don’t really care for that author’s work.

I don’t remember this happening to me with a P.D. James book, but it must have. There’s no other explanation for why I have avoided her work for so long.

The Great P.D. James Avoidance, however, ended last week when I picked up one of her books at Wickenburg’s local library. And yesterday’s reading of Unnatural Causes dissolved any preconceived notions I had about her work.

The book, which was originally published in 1967, concerns the discovery of a dinghy carrying the body of a dead man whose hands have been cut off. The dinghy washes ashore at the seaside town where it originated, which is also the same place the victim lived: Monksmere. The town has an unusually high percentage of full- and part-time residents who are either writers or crititcs. The dead man was a writer.

The book is nearly 40 years old now and it shows its age. Not in a bad way, mind you. More like a “look back” way. A part of the plot concerns the typing (on a typewriter) of the dead man’s manuscripts with and without carbon paper. If you’re old enough to remember typewriters, you’re likely to remember carbon paper, too. Not only did it give you the ability to make a copy of a document as you typed it, but it preserved that document on its shiny blue or black side — until you reused it so many times that you couldn’t read the carbon. Remember the days? Glad they’re gone? Me, too!

I won’t go into any more detail about the story line or suspects because I don’t want to spoil the book for any future reader who likes a good British “cosy” mystery. That’s what this is, through and through. P.D. James and Agatha Christie were cut from similar molds, although I think James has better use of the English language and much better descriptive skills. Her desciptions of the coastal town were so clear that they brought me there — from central Arizona! — and I was able to hear the waves and feel the dampness of the sea air. There’s something to be said for an author who can do that.

My final word? If you like mysteries and haven’t read any P.D. James, Unnatural Causes is a good place to start.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed

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A memoir by Alan Alda.

Never Have Your Dog StuffedLately I’ve been floundering around, looking for something new and interesting to read. I heard an interview with Alan Alda on NPR a few months back. He talked about his book, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed. It sounded like something I’d enjoy, so I picked up a copy.

The book was interesting, full of stories from his childhood and his attempts to get started as an actor. His mother was mentally ill and her illness worsened as she aged. His father, Robert Alda, was an actor with humble beginnings in Vaudeville. Alda discusses his relationships with his parents throughout the book.

In reading the book, I learned that M*A*S*H was Alda’s big acting break. Although he’d appeared in a number of theater productions all over the country and a few movies, none of them had given him the boost that he needed to become a well-established actor. M*A*S*H did that for him. It also apparently helped him hone his acting skills so he could perform better and portray his characters more realistically.

If I had to rate the book on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best, I’d give the book a 3. While it was interesting, it wasn’t the “couldn’t put it down” kind of book I really like to read. In fact, I read it over the course of a few weeks, with 20 or so pages a night before going to sleep.

But if you like to read about actors and other celebrities and have an interest in Alda or his M*A*S*H character, pick up a copy and give it a try. You’re likely to enjoy it more than I did.