Conjunction junction…

Between You & Me: Confessions
of a Comma Queen by
Mary Norris

3 words:
smart, exuberant, geeky

One part
memoir, one part grammar & punctuation handbook, one part investigative
journalism (she gets to the bottom of the mystery of who added the hyphen to Moby-Dick).

My
fellow book geeks: rejoice.

Mary
Norris is a New Yorker copy editor
who writes about words, her work, and her devotion to the #1 pencil.

I knew I
could be her friend when I read: “…I had ordered so many pencils that Cal Cedar
threw in a free sharpener. I loved having it with me, to sharpen pencils on the
go or to whip out in a café if a friend’s point had gotten dull.” (191)

Whipping
out a pencil sharpener: I could be that person.

Add to
that some smart explanations about punctuation, and you’ve got yourself a book
nerd’s dream book.

And if
you’re a New Yorker fan, there are
some delightful anecdotes. One of my favorites dealt with the squeamishness of
editor William Shawn: “According to Ian Frazier, the sentence incorporating as
many Shawn taboos as possible was ‘The short, balding man wearing a wig took
his menstruating wife to a boxing match.’” (p. 163)

If you’re
a video type of person, you can also check out her Comma Queen videos.  

Yes. I’m
serious. The first one is about the comma.

I was
enchanted.