Category: Education

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So Many Books; So Little Time

I’m a relatively fast reader, whether of fiction or non-fiction. With fiction, I find that I generally skim ahead of where I’m scanning, since I usually see a page or so at a time while actually scanning line-by-line. *shrugs* It took me many years to realize I was doing it, but after the initial stumblings caused by becoming consciously aware of what I was doing, I eventually just fell back into doing it absent-mindedly again.

Stories really move along for me. . . except when the author throws a wrench in the works with some subliterate crap, completely stupid description, or idiotic idea that derails my suspension of disbelief. But that’s a “whole nother post” as it were. (Excuse my use of “nother” or don’t. I DGARA. No one’s paying me to write this, you know. *heh*)

With non-fiction, another mechanism slides into play. Along with the “skim ahead” mechanism, nearly 50 years ago I began integrating the “SQ3R” (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review) technique into my non-fiction reading, and the technique has become almost second nature by now. It fits really well with my skimming facility and enhances recollection and understanding.

Add to that the lil thingy that I really enjoy doing (very) amateur word-sleuthing and “etymologizing,” and just flat know a lot of words (too much time as a youth spent reading dictionaries for fun)and can figure out most that I do not know based on familiarity with a few–mostly Romance, though one classical and a couple others–languages and the context in which a word has been used, and reading even otherwise dull tomes is fun for me. . . if they’re written by someone who is literate.

Still, even with a decent reading speed and comprehension, so very, very many books are being added daily to the potential reading list of books already written, that some winnowing skills are essential for any active reader. Here’s a rough outline of how I approach purchasing another book.

Does the subject matter, whether fiction or non-fiction, interest me. This isn’t really all that limiting, since my range of interests is pretty wide, but it does cut off some areas. Social sciences are mostly voodoo, so unless a book has a really good “hook,” I’ll give it a pass. Fiction? Oh, so-called “romance” crap is, urm, not for me. Otherwise, any genre except so-called “literary” crap will do. (I actively abhor typical “literary” works that have been shat out since somewhere around the turn of the 20th Century. Yes, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote crap. So did James Joyce. Pick any one of the other “lit-uh-rah-ree” writers of the 20th Century. Probably crap.)

So, does the subject matter interest me.

What are the first few pages like? How does page 50 read? If a book fails to come up to snuff in the first few pages, I’ll turn to page 50—just a page number I selected many years ago—and see if it’s any better. If not, buh-bye!

What are the reviews like? No, not how many raves or pans but what do the reviews actually say? If a book has many rave reviews but the reviews are hash written either by idiots who are “lit-rah-chure” snobs or illiterate boobs, I’m likely to give the book a pass. If the pans are written by either of those classes, I’m likely to give it a chance. Think about it.

Even given application that general, loose selection process, if I buy a book and try to read it but find myself unsold by anywhere from 25%-50% through, anymore I’ll just ashcan it. There’s not enough time to waste it on reading crap. Oh, if it’s BAD ENOUGH crap, I might finish it, but I’ll compile a list of the author’s sins along the way and might even post a scathing review of it, complete with mocking diatribe pointing out some of the author’s worst sins. So far, though, I have only written one review where I told the author to JUST STOP WRITING! In most reviews of badly-written books, I have stopped short of that and simply counseled those writers to enroll in remedial English courses immediately after beating any proofreaders or editors they had employed with a brickbat.

Really: I just don’t want to waste my time and energy on crappy books. I have too much else to do to pollute the 7-10 books a week I do finish with crap writing. (But when the train wreck’s horrific enough. . . heh)

Continue reading “So Many Books; So Little Time”

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Pejoration of Language is Inevitable

But why does it always seem to stem from illiterates and liars?

Illiterates, for example, tear down useful words and phrases through simple ignorance and sometimes stupidity. An example from something I read recently will illustrate this point: “[I]t’s the exception that makes the rule.” This corruption was obviously drawn from the old adage, “The exception proves the rule,” which actually means, “The exception TESTS the rule.” The writer of “the exception. . . makes the rule” never bothered to learn what the original adage actually said and so his corruption makes at least some sort of (non)sense, based on his poor literacy.

Worse are those who wittingly corrupt words, terms and phrases to mean something opposite of their once common senses. Take for example a self-proclaimed “liberal democrat” whose words and deeds prove him to be a tyrannical statist bent on corrupting democracy.

That’s why I so often call out and condemn both illiterate and disingenuous abuse of English. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” as it were.

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People Who Cannot Even Speak or Write Their Native Tongue Are Stupid

eye-c-stoopid-ppl

I see stupid people. I see stupid “edumacators” who avoid teaching grammar and stupid students who avoid learning English.

Example: “If [I, they, he, etc.] would have” is a construction that, I suppose, is intended to indicate a class of conditional that should be simply, “If I had.” I am *gagamaggot* sick of seeing the evidence of laziness and stupidity “If [I, they, he, etc.] would have” demonstrates. Now, both of y’all who might comment on this are excused, since I have no doubt such abuse of the English language is off the table for you, but for those folks who may read this and grunt, in their most articulate manner, “Huh?!?” I have only this: *arrgggghhh!*

And that is the kindest, gentlest, most generous response possible. In fact, it is far, far kinder, gentler and more generous than such folks deserve, but that’s just me: kind, gentle and generous to a fault. 😉

N.B. Execrable grammar, word misuse, impenetrable amphiboly, etc., are all completely, totally and absolutely inexcusable* in text written by someone who wants to be PAID for writing. It doesn’t matter what excuse some lame-brained writer, editor or critic (IMO, critics who are writers are few and far between, so I consider the class to be separate, for all “intensive porpoises” *heh*) excretes, such abuse of English is offensive to anyone who thinks these things through, ESPECIALLY when the abuser wants to be paid for the abuse.

*An exception that proves the rule: dialog in a piece of fiction intended to build a character that is an illiterate boob is the one place such things can be marginally legitimate. Anywhere else these abuses occur just demonstrate that the author is an illiterate boob.

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Holes and Gaps, Lacks and Losses. . .

I read too much and have done so for darned near all my life. That creates a few problems from time to time. For example, recently, my problem with reading books on history has been too many moments of getting into a book and either saying to myself (over and over), “Know that already,” or “Oh, you flippin’ idiot,” or “Liar!” *sigh* Every now and then, though, I do manage to run across a decent history (or related) book I’ve missed. For example, how I missed Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “Lays of Ancient Rome” for so many years, I’ll never know. Strange the lacunae one can find in one’s reading list. . .

Another problem is in reading fiction (well, and non-fiction for that matter). By now, I know all the plots. My reading/recognition/comprehension vocabulary is. . . probably excessive. Heck, I enjoy reading dictionaries and even puzzling out probable etymologies on my own before checking authorities, etc. I have read enough well-written text that, while I don’t always show it in my own casual writing here and elsewhere (for which I am NOT PAID), I’m familiar enough with good writing (grammar, word usage, etc.) that I’m offended by people who expect to be paid for writing crap.

And do NOT let me get started on contemporary “poetry”! Please! “Crap” is far, far too kind as a description of most of it.

It’s a burden. Be glad I bear it so you don’t have to if you don’t want to. *heh*

(Both of my regular readers here are literate enough to bear the burden as well, but can feel free to let me do so *cough* alone *cough* if they wish. ;-))

OTOH, one of the very real joys of reading a “lottamuch” is the discovery of those holes and gaps, lacks and losses in my education and. . . filling them.

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Illiterate Nation

I just read a comment by a fairly regularly published columnist who wrote “assume” when she meant “as soon”. That’s a pretty strong indicator of what any literate person would see as illiteracy: a verbal vocabulary that outstrips a written/read vocabulary to the point of a baffling lack of comprehension.

Assuming people are literate just because they have a large storehouse of words they can encode or decode (whether they comprehend those words’ meanings or not) is something I’d as soon see–No! a lot SOONER see–eliminated as allowed to continue. More and more often nowadays, it just ain’t necessarily so.

More here and here and here and here.

Literacy is more than just being able to decode/encode letters into words; it’s more than having a large vocabulary of–largely–misunderstood words; it’s more than simply being able to encode/decode words and know those words’ meanings. Literacy is being able to read and comprehend (genuinely) complex text and having read loads and tons and yards and yards of well-written text requiring both concrete and abstract thought comprehension. THAT’S what literate people do.

But more and more Americans think they are literate, because they have (lying) certification saying they are.

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Fun, Fun, Fun

Sometimes, Internet discussions can be a blast. I especially love it when some recent college grad (“recent” to me is somewhere in the last 30 years or so *heh*) gets all huffy and insulted when specific errors in their argument (fact, egregious word mis-usage, fallacy of reasoning–and the effect it has on his* argument–etc.) is pointed out to him*, is monumentally insulted, hurt and angry, instead of bucking up, growing up, getting a pair and doing his* own homework.

I really enjoy it when a po’ widdle baby interlocutor’s argument is a vehement “refutation” of an assertion I’ve made and. . . he* ends up accidentally supporting my argument, or when he* latches onto a word or term I’ve used (“Ooo! That sounds smart. I’ll use it too!”) and uses the word or term in a manner completely antithetical to its meaning, proving he* has no idea what he’s* just said.

Now, I’ll admit that some of the reasons I get such a laugh out of these kinds of things are not exactly flattering. For example, some are,

1. I DGARA about some illiterate blowhard’s tender lil feewings. Suck it up buttercup.
2. I enjoy watching metaphorical steam coming out of self-made idiots’ ears. They worked hard to earn my disrespect and they deserve it.
3. (Positive!)One in a hundred–with luck–will actually ask serious questions about how to repair the “holes and gaps, lacks and losses, absences, insipidies and the like” in their education/knowledge base.

I recall one such po’ soul from about 20 years ago. Head of the English department at a prestigious East Coast university. Emailed me privately to ask me–quite seriously–if my final comment about a post of his (well after deconstructing and pretty well demolishing it) were a reference to Faulkner. Well, except that he didn’t inflect the subjunctive mood in his question. Oh, the comment? To the effect that his argument was “sound and fury, signifying nothing” (and yes, it was in quotation marks). He quite literally (and I use the term accurately here) had NO idea that the quote was from The Scottish Play. No, seriously. The head of an English department at a prestigious East Coast university was essentially illiterate. He had never even read any of Shakespeare’s works. That qualifies an English professor as illiterate.

*sheesh*

But, since he emailed me privately, sincerely asking to be enlightened, I simply referred him to The Bard (with act, scene and line citation–Act V, Scene 5, in context, lines 20-31(? IIRC) for the soliloquy.).

Any English prof who’s unfamiliar with that soliloquy is taking his pay under false pretenses, IMO.

But those kinds of folks turn out the illiterate boobs I run across every now and then, illiterate boobs who are adamant in their obdurate fantasy that they “know stuff” and can actually reason.

I do them and the world at large a kindness when I disabuse them of their fantasies.

Wonderful! I get to have fun and perform a public service at the same time! Win-win for me! (And, in those rare cases when the illiterate boob actually wakes up and smells the coffee, a win for the illiterate boob, too.)

Yeh, I don’t do the PC “his/her, s/he” crap much. It’s stupid. And I find “their” used as a singular to be offensive, too, although I have gotten sucked into using it every now and then. Bad influences. 😉

N.B. I still only claim to be about half as literate as my grandfathers, some of my uncles and others I have known well for decades. And I enjoy having opportunities to repair my “holes and gaps. . .” etc. when they’re pointed out to me, so please feel free to note errors I make. Yeh, including typos. *sigh* But do be careful making an argument about word misuse. Some of my fav reading material is still my collection of dictionaries. 🙂

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Self-Made Morons: Giving the Gift of Laughter

UPDATE:

I’m really late to this thing, and I don’t really have anything to add, but that’s never stopped me before, so why now, eh? 😉

The book that’s the subject of the kerffuffle mentioned below has won the 2014 Compton Crook Award, arguably one of the awards most insulated from influence by the agenda-driven GHH crowd. It’s a reader-driven award for best sci-f/fantasy first novel by an individual author

http://www.bsfs.org/bsfsccw.htm

So, some guy wrote a (pretty good, IMO) space opera/first, et al, contact novel and someone else obviously trying to influence some upcoming awards (one of which the novel had been nominated for) wrote a “review” wherein she openly admitted she hadn’t really read the book, just cherry-picked things that offended her. (Apparently she wrote another that was even more over-the-top, but it seems to have disappeared from all the places links point to. Wonder why. Not.)

The review’s here: Fire with Fire: The Most Interesting Man in ALL TEH WORLDS (The book’s here or here, in case you want to make your own comparison to what the reviewer who DIDN’T read the book has to say about it.)

Here, perhaps this will push your curiosity button. One of the things that sends the “reviewer” around the bend was this cherry-picked sentence (quoted in more context at the “review”):

Downing shook Corcoran’s wide, strong hand.

Yeh, that’d give me the willies too. I would greatly prefer to shake a “narrow, weak, limp-wristed” pussy metrosexual paw. Yep. Oh, wait. That’s not me; that’s the po’ widdle baby who cherry-picked things to be offended at and who refused to read the whole thing before “reviewing” it. Might run into another scary “wide, strong hand”!

*feh*

To the po’ widdle baby who apparently “thinks” she has a glittery hoohah, but who obviously has simply spent too many hours playing with her autolobotomy kit, I have only this to offer: life won’t get any better until you put down the autolobotomy kit and stop sniffing the unicorn farts, buttercup. (Yeh, yeh, I’d offer this at the offending post, but I’m not wasting even a throwaway email address on obtaining a login there.)

As to Gannon’s book, well, below the fold, mmmK?

Continue reading “Self-Made Morons: Giving the Gift of Laughter”

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A Reader’s Lament. . . OK, Gripe

Yeh, yeh: I read far too many books. Blah-blah-blah.

Sadly, I had competent instruction in English when I was a lad. Occasionally I even choose to write as though I paid attention during class, even though I do not ask folks to pay me for what I write. But folks who expect me to pay them for their writing really ought to pay attention to proper grammar (I allow some leeway for dialog, since one can’t expect all the characters in a piece of fiction to be literate *heh*), spelling and word usage.

A couple of examples from today’s readings illustrate my lament/gripe:

From a “real” publisher comes a book sprinkled with loads of grammar, usage, spelling and punctuation errors. One sample: “The McCarthy’s [sic] did not comment. . . ” Apostrophe Abuse is prevalent and shows up in many ways, but I really hate it that more and more writers (and proofreaders and editors) have NO idea how to form plurals from proper nouns.

From the preface material in a self-pub (although I understand “Indie Published” is the preferred term nowadays) book, I gathered the author was tickled pink with his wife’s “proofreading” and his editor’s “professionalism”. *shudder* Not often a good sign. Sure enough, the thing’s littered with errors most commonly found in works written by hormone-lobotomized seventh-graders. *argh!*

Read two more by another author yesterday. Were it not for the *cough* “indifferent” *cough* editing/proofreading, I might have given the books as many as four out of five stars on Amazon for books of the genre. As it was, I was generous to give the books three stars. I would prefer to have the author, any proofreaders and editors at hand to personally dope slap. *sigh* Of course, the author was another of those who thanked his proofreader(s)/editor(s). (As I said earlier, usually a bad sign.)

Yeh, yeh, on top of my other reading (*sigh* mostly background to “news” and other fictional non-fiction), five novels in the past two days. One of them was competently written/proofread/edited. One. So far. . .

Welcome to the post-literate society, where published works must rise only to almost the literary quality of a Twitter or FarceBook post.

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Faux-Literacy

I saw an article today in passing that reminded me once again how the Internet has helped spread faux-literacy. Its title contained, “all the cool offices aren’t in San Francisco” even though the content of first paragraph of the article indicated that the writer’s view was something very different, that NOT ALL of the cool offices are in SF.

For anyone who’s confused as to the difference, thank the Internet, the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind and your incompetent English teachers for the spread of faux-literacy. (A couple of Venn diagrams would clarify the differences, but there one would have to fall back on skills math teachers may or may not have imparted. *sigh*)

Oh, well, here’s one set of diagrams that can illustrate the difference, although there are other ways to do it. This is just the simplest, perhaps (Click on graphics for optimal size):

All-not

Not-all

Of course, the gripe I give a bare outline of above is just the tip of the faux-literate iceberg. I had live almost six decades before I began hearing/reading subliterate morons saying/writing, “I wish I would have” instead of “I wish I had.” Did this sort of misuse of the conditional perfect just start being widely used as illiteracy (even among college graduates) has grown over the last few decades until it reached some sort of critical mass and spill over into public fora, or has it been there all along and just hidden from me because I had an exposure to people who were primarily a more literate bunch of folks?

*shrugs* Who knows. I certainly see much, much more of these things since the Internet has democratized publishing of all sorts of writing.

faux-literacy Well, what do you think it means, anyway? Lots of folks think they’re literate because other people have told them they are, accept them as literate and even pay them to write their subliterate crap. They think they are literate and others around them do, but what they write (or say) proves that they are not. The more they fake literacy and spread their subliterate, moronic screeds, the dumber public discourse becomes.

And they’re everywhere. Most prominent Mass MEdia Podpeople: condemned as faux-literates by the words they utter. Politicians, Academia Nut Fruitcakes, “Edumacators” and more: all spreading subliteracy via their public pretense of literacy.

The lowest common denominator is the measure of the best in our society.

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“Magnificent Devices”–Wow. Just Wow.

I allowed myself to get sucked into this four book collection the other day. Wow. So very well-written. Best “steam-punk world” I’ve experienced. VERY hard to put down. Engaging characters, good plotting, well-detailed descriptive narrative: just a Good Read.

Magnificent Devices

Now, if you saw my normal reading list, you might be surprised that I enjoyed this collection so much. Four short books (the whole collection doesn’t run much over 800pp) that were a really fun read. I immediately bought the next book, A Lady of Resources, and immediately devoured it. Yes, I enjoyed the entire collection and I will purchase the next book as soon as it’s available.

But why, pray, might you be surprised at my glowing commentary? Oh, well, these books are “juvies” (yeh, yeh, they call ’em “YA” books now, but since “juvenile” now extends to the late 20s–or later: most politicians are sociopathic juveniles, for example–and “young adults” are more likely to be 30-somethings anymore, I’ll just stick with “juvie” mmK? ;-)), and the ONLY reason I read juvies is because I enjoy sharing my Wonder Woman’s world. She’s a K-8 librarian and is very close with her readers. I suspect a very large portion of her enjoyment of juvie books is anticipation of interaction with her students about the books she reads WITH them. And I enjoy the well-written and well-edited ones for being able to share them with her. (Besides, they are invariably very, very quick reads and don’t disrupt my other reading hardly at all, so. . . *heh*)

OK, but these books are quite different. Yeh, yeh, I read the Percy Jackson stuff. *yawn* Well-written enough, but really quite pedestrian, boringly predictable. And yes, I read the J.K. Rowling things, despite being bored to tears after getting halfway through the first one. (Maybe I’m a bit picky, but then again maybe not. . . )

These books, though, are real gems. They’re just very, very well-written, with an excellent Victorian period feel melding well with the fictional steampunk universe, characters that are engaging and credible, ripping good stories, just. . . just Good Reads, regardless the genre or target audience. What’s even more surprising is that this very, very well-written prose and these very, very well-told stories are from the hand of a person with an actual B.A. in Literature AND an M.F.A. in Writing Popular Fiction–two things that, in my experience, tend to result in writers producing Suckitudinous Fiction. *heh* My hat’s off to Shelley Adina for developing REAL writing chops despite her academic credentials. 😉