An up-and-down yet mostly amusing collection. Many readers will skim the short analyses while enjoying the examples and...
Common expressions gain richness of meaning through mistakes in word usage.
As an editor at the New Yorker, Menaker (My Mistake, 2013) often encountered phrases from fledgling writers in which a sound-alike word, mistaken for the right one, would add a whole new dimension to the meaning of a phrase. Take, for example, “the throws of packing,” which replaces a word that many could not define (“throes”) with a common, action-packed one that suggests the way so many of us pack, throwing things here and there into piles, boxes, or suitcases. Or, “pass mustard.” Even fewer might be able to define the correct “muster” or use it in any other context. But “mustard” provides a visual dimension, however incongruous, and it perhaps relates to another phrase, “too old to cut the mustard,” which is linguistically unrelated but could become confused in the mind. Some of the entries proceed from a different impulse and gain poetic resonance, such as “sobbing wet,” which seems to suggest something different and sadder than “sopping.” And having a “self of steam” could easily apply to someone suffering from low self-esteem. New Yorker illustrator Chast (Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, 2014, etc.) is typically brilliant when the cues call for visualization, especially with the stomach X-ray for “end-trails” and “something that really gets my gander up” (another one of those where most readers couldn’t define the correct “dander” or use it in any other context). There is even one selection that could spark a geographical debate, since “chile peppers” is common parlance from Texas through the Southwest, even though “Red Hot Chile Peppers” would not be correct as the band’s name. Acclaimed poet Billy Collins provides the foreword.
An up-and-down yet mostly amusing collection. Many readers will skim the short analyses while enjoying the examples and illustrations.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-544-80063-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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