Review: Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss

 

Eats, Shoots & Leaves is a book by Lynne Truss, first published in 2003 by Profile Books Ltd.

We are all taught about punctuation, and how to use it correctly, from a young age. However, we see ignorance and indifference everywhere. Who would think there was any form of punctuation in words such as antiques? Obviously the people who wrote "ANTIQUE,S" on the A120 near Colchester. This book is for sticklers and lovers of punctuation: we are not alone. 

The above is a basic overview of the book, but what really made me want to read it is the joke on the back cover. Thus, I will include it now. 

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder. 

"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation. 

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Underneath that, these words are written: So, punctuation really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death.

♥

As I was preparing for this book, I wrote an article for The Daily Telegraph, hoping to elicit a few punctuation horror stories, and it was like detonating a dam. Hundreds of emails and letters arrived, all of them testifying to the astonishing power of recall we sticklers have when things have annoyed us.

("It was in 1987, I'll never forget, and it said "CREAM TEA'S".)

♥

I was very lucky to pick up this book from a charity box in a beach cafe a couple of weeks ago, and I am very glad I did. 

Although I have discovered I may not be advanced enough in the literay area to understand everything this book talks about; I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

This genre is not normally the type I would choose to read, but the joke on the back really grasped my attention. I love a good laugh, and this book sounded like it would be just that. And I was right, I had a lot of little giggles while reading this (one of them being when I read the CREAM TEA'S joke above).

If you're also a stickler, and are annoyed when you see 'Two Weeks Notice', without an apostrophe, on an advertisements; you really should read this book.

-Beth

Happy Reading!♥