Eats, Shoots and Leaves

OK Jess, where are you?

I could not sleep, as I received an espresso machine for my birthday yesterday.
So I read the first 131 pages of Lynn Truss's book Eats, Shoots and Leaves .

Here is what I have to say about this little book:
I love the way she writes. She has such a vast vocabulary and chooses the perfect word every time. We North Americans all love that British way of tossing in the very most vividly descriptive verb to give a sentence the perfect zing.
It's a book about punctuation, and you may well wonder how long that can stay interesting. My answer is, just short of 131 pages. Maybe it's because it's after 1AM.

But she does make some observations regarding the virtual absence of training in punctuation during the 60's and 70's in most schools, and these observations were sort of comforting to me. She made some comment that those of us who were educated at that time tend to feel it's our fault we're ignorant of the proper rules of punctuation, and then she frees me up to blame my educators for it.....a weight is lifted from my shoulders.

I also appreciate her remarks on Shakespeare's abundant use of apostrophes, as I remember thinking those partial words ("fie on't" and "too much i' the sun") were just annoying.

Then I think I read along and sort of woke up in a section about semi-colons and George Bernard Shaw. At this point it began to seem like too much fussing around over punctuation.

I think I am not a die-hard lover of punctuation, and Lynn Truss would call me a barbarian.

But she is an excellent writer, and really delightful to read. Not many people could make that much talk about punctuation seem fun.

So, tomorrow I will finish this book and move onto something with a plot!