It’s Really Just a Slothful Willful Ignorance

Confusion about personal pronouns has abounded among the lazy and willfully ignorant (the most pernicious form of stupidity) for much longer than the current “gender fluidity” stupidity. A typical construction for someone stuck at a VERY low English fluency (let alone literacy) level, and yet I see it time and again in books, passed over by illiterate proofreaders and editors goes something like this: “We have done something bigger than you and I.” Really? Take the magic “and” as well as the other person out: “We have done something bigger than I” just looks and sounds stupid doesn’t it? It doesn’t get any less stupid looking and sounding by adding a magic “and.” Nope, “We have done something bigger than you and ME.”

Delightful

I had lost track of Margaret Ball and not read anything by her for several years when I ran across A Pocketful of Stars (Applied Topology Book 1). Good stuff, Maynard. I’m now working my way through the seven book series, and, if then quality remains at the level I expect from Ball, I am NOT looking forward to finishing book seven and discovering she has not written book eight. Yet. *heh*

Oh, there’s nothing “important” about the books (although my brief spate of appreciation for advanced–or even just semi-advanced–math ~50-ish years ago and continued casual appreciation to this day does enjoy the “math talk”). They are just fun, well-told stories with amusing and interesting characters. Juuuust a wee tad Wodehousian in “fluffiness,” if Wodehouse were to have been mathematically inclined and in tune with contemporary “college kidsian” mores.


*sigh* OK, it’s taken a bit of a “bodice-ripper” turn in book 3. Oh, well. It was good while it lasted.

Oops! #2,965

In order to check your compatibility with Standard Social Media English, you might want to take an English language fluency/literacy quiz. If you score too well, your English will not be down to the “standards” of typical social media drivel. Here’s an easy-peasy MOR quiz, though it does have a couple of BrE (British English) quirks:

Test your English

Sadly, my English language fluency/literacy disqualifies me from engaging in Standard Social Media English drivel:

English Literacy 3

Ah! From the File, “Book Blurbs That Make You Say ‘NO!'”

“If you like Hitchhikers guide [sic] to the Galaxy and the Starship Troopers movie, you’ll love this book!”

Firstly, the movie adaptation of Starship Troopers sucked swamp gas. Secondly, The two VERY different stories had almost nothing in common whatsoever, apart from the fact that the books they were based on were a couple of the best works of two very different masters of the science fiction field.

If the execrably written and edited excerpt from a book blurb that went downhill from there is at all representative of the book, then the best thing to do is flip on by with a curt, “No.”


Aside–and having nothing to do with the comment above–I dislike “dramatis personae” lists in the front of a book. Sure, I imagine it might help folks keep characters straight, but I think a writer is better served (and better serves his readers) by organically introducing his characters within the narrative, as different characters meet, and, although if a book is in a series and I have read 1,000-1,100 books–not all fiction, of course–in the six months between episodes (and that’s roughly a six month reading list for me), I still prefer to exercise my lil grey cells and recall the characters that were introduced previously w/o reading down a list of ’em.

*whew!* Saved from Two Books I’ll Never Read

Why will I not read two books, one of which had a blurb that mentioned a child “in the backseat,” and the other of which was titled “Appaloosa Summer” but featured a picture of a horse on the cover that was PLAINLY NOT an Appaloosa? I think you may have a clue. *smh* “Backseat” is properly an ADJECTIVE, though more and more illiterates are forcing its use as a noun (instead of using “back seat” as they ought to), and someone writing a book with the title featuring Appaloosas surely ought to have at least used an Appaloosa on the cover instead of some vague breed with a bay coloration.

Book Hoarder

So, yeh, I hardly ever let go of a book I own. Have more hardcopy books now than I have shelving for. It’s a problem. Ebooks to the rescue? Well, sorta. First, not long after it was up and running, I requested a CD of all the books Gutenberg-dot-org had at the time. Offloaded those text files to other storage, stored the CD and had LOTS of reading to do.

Not enough, though.

When downloads from Gutenberg became available, I began regular searches for ebook duplicates of my most significant hardcopy books, other books I wanted to read but had not yet obtained, etc. About that time, Baen-dot-com lsted its free library of sci-fi books. I’ve been a sci-fi reader since third grade, so. . . Got ’em all (and read ’em, and updated as new freebies became available). Then I started also buying eARCs from Baen in their bundles of six or more eARCs for $18. Then buying others at list prices. (Crafty, crafty Baen: sucked me in all right!). Then I just started looking for freebie ebooks in general. Found military manuals, preparedness books, all kinds of how-to and craft books, history, theology, math, science, etc., all over the web, oh, and and free books from Amazon, as well.

I am now behind on my reading quite a bit. I have also been storing all ebooks in multiple formats (when available or convertible) on different media on different storage devices, some of which are ALWAYS offline and relatively safe from loss by various means. Different formats, in part, because I enjoyed correcting the text of the eARCs from Baen. . . in the html formats (mobi format is a PITA to edit–for me at least).

So, now my thousands of hardcopy books have much, much more than been surpassed by double in my ebook collection, and I NEED to read faster. . . The more I learn, the more I discover I don’t know. Of course.

It’s Not Always Enough By Itself, But. . .

Yeh, sometimes it’s enough to put me off a writer: misuse of the reflexive pronoun “myself” when “me” is correct. Some subliterates think it sounds classy or something, I guess, when all it really does is shout, “I don’t know what I’m doing!”

Here: a tip for beginners with English, or those English majors who skipped taking Remedial English, and managed to graduate nearly illiterate.

BTW, the same morons tend to misuse the objective case “I” where a subjective case pronoun is called for. (Yeh, again: they probably think it sounds “classy.” It doesn’t.)

No, It Is Not Correct

I have seen “one of the only” used correctly exactly once. All other uses of it have been nothing other than evidence of stupidity. Yes, stupidity.

only: without others or anything further; alone; solely; exclusively

Now, admittedly, IF “one of the only” is followed by or includes a qualifier AND eliminates the article “the” (which ALSO signifies singularity, unless a group is clearly designated) bi>like “one of only five,” then the stupid phrase is transmogrified into something that has some sense to it. Apparently, pre-Internet publishers agree with me:

Yeh: the Internet. *sigh* Enstupiating the world by empowering Ortega’s “mass-man.”