I know, I should not care. I should also know that they probably have their place. But I am really, really annoyed when I read “cheap” book blurbs with sentences such as:
“n million copies sold worldwide!”
“I've enjoyed it”, “Miss it at your own risk”, “Brilliant” (Someone famous for a reason or another)
“This book will change your life.”
No, I am not buying it because many others bought it. I'm not buying it because some famous person said a couple words about it. I'm not buying it for some feel-good promise. Damn it.
Some time ago I read some excerpts from this little book, so when I found it in a second-hand book shop I decided it was time to buy it and read it end to end.
The book is for hardcore grammar nerds, so for everyone who dies a little bit inside while reading sentences like “The book and it's author” and “I like they're hair”. For each punctuation mark, there is some nice history and a practical “how to use” section. I have found some interesting use cases I didn't know about, and it's overall funny to read.
I'll expand on the practical notes to keep as a reference.
I have an odd guilty pleasure: the so-called “self-help” books. I know that, more often than not, they are just commercial operations, but I like reading them for multiple reasons: to decode the distinctive style of an author, to understand what kind of writing and what topics capture the audience and sell, and sometimes even to pick up some good ideas.
Self-improvement is something that I've always been trying to practice, and no, I do not expect to turn my life around with a self-help book. Nevertheless, I always like picking up chances to reflect, and these books give me a lot of material to think about, even though such material is trite or generic. Sometimes, just a change of perspective can work wonders.
Now that the server is back to life (well, at least for the blog), I am back to my commitment: a blog entry per day for at least a month.
Today it has been a really good day as I finally found the book (or, rather, the reference) I had forgotten and have been looking for for so many days. It turns out my photographic memory was better than my “content” memory: I remembered more the physical look of the page and the paragraph than the text. Actually, the text I seemed to remember sort of misled me.
In case you're wondering, I was looking for Crossing to safety, as cited in Test-driven development.