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When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better And/Or Worse
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List Price:
$12.95
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$10.36
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Manufacturer: Broadway
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 425.5
EAN: 9780767920780
ISBN: 0767920783
Label: Broadway
Manufacturer: Broadway
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: 2007-12-26
Publisher: Broadway
Release Date: 2007-12-26
Studio: Broadway
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Editorial Reviews:
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What do you get when you mix nine parts of speech, one great writer, and generous dashes of insight, humor, and irreverence? One phenomenally entertaining language book. In his waggish yet authoritative book, Ben Yagoda has managed to undo the dark work of legions of English teachers and libraries of dusty grammar texts. Not since School House Rock have adjectives, adverbs, articles, conjunctions, interjections, nouns, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs been explored with such infectious exuberance. Read If You Catch an Adjective, Kill It and:
Learn how to write better with classic advice from writers such as Mark Twain (“If you catch an adjective, kill it”), Stephen King (“I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs”), and Gertrude Stein (“Nouns . . . are completely not interesting”).
Marvel at how a single word can shift from adverb (“I did okay”), to adjective (“It was an okay movie”), to interjection (“Okay!”), to noun (“I gave my okay”), to verb (“Who okayed this?”), depending on its use.
Avoid the pretentious preposition at, a favorite of real estate developers (e.g., “The Shoppes at White Plains”).
Laugh when Yagoda says he “shall call anyone a dork to the end of his days” who insists on maintaining the distinction between shall and will.
Read, and discover a book whose pop culture references, humorous asides, and bracing doses of discernment and common sense convey Yagoda’s unique sense of the “beauty, the joy, the artistry, and the fun of language.”
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Fun to read
Comment: Anyone who likes words will enjoy this fun-to-read book about parts of speech and more. There are interesting stories and histories as well as thoughtful explanations. This would be a great gift for any word lover on your gift list.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Slow going
Comment: If you are looking for a quick desktop guide to grammar, this book is not what you want. Perhaps you are interested in an easy read on grammar instead? Nope, not this one. But if it's information, history of grammar, or a 'how to' reference, this one will do the trick. For me, one of the best sections starts on page 35 and is titled: "A Glossary of Unusual Adjectives." Only four pages long, this section alone was worth the purchase price. It helps if you're a word nut, too.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but not something that will help you in your writing
Comment: When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It entertains. Ben Yagoda, the author, writes well. (Referring to him as "Ben Yagoda, the author," is a bit of a joke -- that phrasing sometimes means something special, as the book will tell you.) And Yagoda lays out the principles behind the parts of speech with a witty style that goes deep enough, but not too deep. Never a pedant, he still teaches.
But his style was a bit much for me. He reminds me of a friend who makes a joke out of almost everything. He's fun to be around for a while. But stay too long in his presence, and the urge to tell him to shut up becomes almost unbearable. Same with Yagoda for me.
One example Yagoda used -- as a preface to the section on prepositions -- shows why. E.B. White, co-author of the The Elements of Style and author of Charlotte's Web, once wrote in a letter: "The next grammar book I bring out I want to tell how to end a sentence with five prepositions. A father of a little boy goes upstairs after supper to read to his son, but he brings the wrong book. The boy says, 'What did you bring the book that I don't want to be read to out of up for?'" (Regrettably, White died before he wrote the book.)
But when Yagoda uses the example, suddenly it is "What did you bring that book about Down Under that I didn't want to be read to out of up for? -- Boy's question to his father, who's just climbed the stairs and walked into the boy's bedroom carrying a boring book about Australia." (I suspect that the version Yagoda intended was this one -- "What did you bring the book that I did not want to be read to about Down Under out of up for?" His version makes little sense -- why add the "about Down Under" in the middle of the sentence?)
If you like Yagoda's version better, you'll like Yagoda's book a lot. If you like White's version better, you won't.
And no one did a careful copy edit of the book. Lots of typos. Sometimes the wrong word was used. Pretty careless for a book like this to have errors like that. What's an English professor doing missing them? His students can have a field day finding them.
So let me recommend this. If you like to read a lot, pick this book up. Few books cover this subject matter. Those that do are pretty dry, something that cannot be said about Yagoda's writing.
But if you like to be more selective, take a pass on When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It. Save your time and your book budget for something better. There are enough books that are.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Speak, Memory
Comment: "When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It!" Hmm... Too bad Nabokov forgot that one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Speech Therapy
Comment: I caught it, fought it and still can't get rid of that hellacious adjective. Unfortunately, the book was of little help or kept my interest. If you're an English Lit. major this may be for you -- Steve
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