I just finished reading the most wonderful book! It came up in one of the editing mailing lists I subscribe to. (I wish I could remember who recommended it!) It’s a series of essays by Anne Fadiman (someone I had never heard of before) that talks about her and her family’s obsession with words, books, and reading. I knew from the very first page this was going to be fun. Every single essay elicited much loud laughter; in at least one case it was uncontrollable. But it wasn’t just funny. There were some very poignant moments as well. From the act of merging libraries to her secret obsession with mail-order catalogues, from the proofreading gene to what is and is not allowed to be done to a book, these essays are delicious! My academic friends will particularly enjoy the essay on plagiarism, and my editor friends will no doubt love the essay “Inset a carrot.” If you enjoy books and reading, then you really must go out and get this book right away. (Yes, it made it into my purchase queue.) I just can’t say enough good about it. I’m simply not eloquent enough. Go. Now. Go get it!

P.S. Why not throw out her little word list from pages 12 and 13. How many of these twenty-two do you know without looking them up? (I only knew 3, and I could only remember encountering “in the wild” a total of 5.)

monophysite, mephitic, calineries, diapason, grimoire, adapertile, retromingent, perllan, cupellation, adytum, sepoy, subadar, paludal, apozemical, camorra, ithyphallic, alcalde, aspergill, agathodemon, kakodemon, goetic, opapanax

Herman and Chomsky assert that the best way to understand modern mass media and how it operates is using a “propaganda model.” They introduce the model and then give a slew of case studies to support their view. Let’s start with the model itself. It’s not that they believe there’s some conspiracy or government department that forces certain stories to be treated in certain ways. They believe instead that the nature of culture and media as it exists today creates an environment where news gets propagandized just as if there were. Here’s how they describe it:

A propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public. The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news “filters,” fall under the following headings: (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and “experts” funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) “flak” as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) “anticommunism” as a national religion and control mechanism. These elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw material of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. They fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns.

Sorry for the long quote, but that one paragraph basically encapsulates the entire 400 pages. I think the model is intriguing and plausible—certainly the most plausible model I’ve encountered—but I couldn’t help but feel utterly unqualified to fully understand and judge their argument. First of all, the case studies are copious and verbose. I have to honestly say I did not read every word. It didn’t help that the case studies were all at least 30 years old and thus far removed from my lived experience. I just didn’t feel I was able to accurately judge how honest they were being with their data selection. It seemed to me like they just spent pages and pages and pages hammering home each of the above five points over and over again. I’m certain the book could have been cut in half. The writing was also as dry as sand. It’s not obtuse, but it’s sure not fun to read. (Don’t get me started about the book’s design, though at least the cover was awesome.)

If you’re a news hound or are particularly interested the subject of media objectivity, I’m sure you’ll get something out of the book (though it would help if you were at least 50 years old). Otherwise, read the above quote, ponder it for a bit, and then move on to find a different book on the subject. You’ll probably find this one a little painful.

It’s unusual to “review” reference works, perhaps, but the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS, or the “orange bible” [don't let the dust cover fool you, the book is actually bright orange]) is too exceptional to not mention here. While in my line of work there are sections that see constant, recurring use, I’ve only read the entire 1000+ pages cover to cover three times: I finished the third time today.

One thing that seems to surprise people about editors is that they look stuff up all the time. Good editors do not sit as judge, jury, and executioner, enforcing strictly their specific views on grammar, usage, and style. Style is essentially arbitrary, and there is not always a strictly right or wrong way to do something. Editors work with best practices—traditional ways of communicating effectively, which change slowly over time. To this end we refer endlessly to good dictionaries (that help us not only with nuances of meaning but with issues of hyphenation [byproduct or by-product], change of use over time [in 1880, was it Northwest Territories or North-West Territories], and syllabification), culture-specific usage guides (to help identify idiomatic uses of common expressions, list common prepositions and their nuances, and elucidate sticky issues like the difference between lie and lay), and style guides (which cover the gamut from sparse to encyclopedic). As its title suggests, CMOS is a style guide. Well, not just a style guide, but the style guide—the biggest, most comprehensive, and perhaps most referenced and best known of them all.

If you want to be a writer or to work at all in the production of textual works (whether for the web, e-books, or traditional print publishing), this is an essential book to have access to and at least a passing familiarity with. You can also subscribe to the online edition. Those that already know the book can stop here. If you’d like to know more about what the book contains, click the “More” link below and continue on.

Perhaps the best way to show you the sorts of things CMOS covers is to go through the table of contents. It’s split into three main divisions, entitled “The Publishing Process,” “Style and Usage,” and “Documentation,” followed by some very helpful back matter.

The first part, “The Publishing Process,” goes through what a book and periodical are, what parts they generally contain, and in what order they generally appear. It talks about the stages of production you can expect and even provides an excellent section on copyright and permissions (geared towards a US audience, but still useful elsewhere). Here you’ll find answers to questions like

• Where does a book epigraph generally go in relation to the preface?
• What are some general best practices for preparing a manuscript for submission to a publisher?
• What are the sorts of things a manuscript editor is going to do and look for?
• What is the difference between a manuscript/copy editor and a proofreader?
• What are general best practices for tables and figures and their captions?
• Even if I’m not publishing in the US, what are the sorts of issues surrounding rights and permissions I should be aware of?

The second part, “Style and Usage,” comprises the bulk of the book. It contains the following subsections:

• Grammar and Usage
  • What are the parts of speech exactly (e.g., nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc.)?
  • What is the difference between grammar and usage?
  • How can I write in a bias-free way?

• Punctuation
  • What is the correct way to use a semicolon?
  • Should punctuation go inside or outside of the closing quotation mark?
  • What are all the ways you can use a comma? (And what the heck is a coordinating conjunction?)
  • Are there really 3 types of dashes?

• Spelling, Distinctive Treatment of Words, and Compounds
  • What’s the correct way to form the plural of numbers? of italicized terms? of proper names?
  • What about the possessive?
  • What are “scare quotes” and when can I use them?
  • When do I need to hyphenate compound adjectives?

• Names and Terms (I love this section)
  • So is it the Pope or the pope?
  • How do I write out epithets (like Ivan “the Terrible”)?
  • Is it Western Canada or western Canada?
  • How do I capitalize cultural periods, academic subjects, religious terms and offices, or scientific terms?
  • Do I italicize the title of a book? What about the title of a poem? What about a painting?

• Numbers
  • Should I write 400 or four hundred?
  • What are SI units and prefixes, and how are they used?
  • How are large (and very small) numbers notated around the world?
  • When and how should I use Roman numerals?

• Abbreviations
  • What are the accepted abbreviations for books of the Apocrypha, geographical locations, or scientific terms?
  • Do I need periods between each letter? Do I need space, too?

• Foreign Languages
  • What are the best practices for dealing with non-latin alphabets?
  • How do French texts most commonly delineate dialogue?
  • Generally speaking, how should I hyphenate Italian words?
  • What are best practices for dealing with Chinese and Japanese characters?

• Mathematics in Type
  • What needs to be italicized?
  • Should I put space around all the operators, or only some of them?
  • How should I mark up math copy for the typesetter?
  • What is Dirac Notation?
  • Are the multiplication cross (×) with the multiplication dot (⋅) always interchangeable?

• Quotations and Dialogue
  • Should I run the quote in or block it out?
  • Do block quotes need quotation marks?
  • Does the source citation go before or after the closing punctuation mark?
  • How should I use the ellipsis?

The third section, “Documentation,” goes through everything you could ever want to know about bibliographies, reference lists, and indexing. Every writer should read these sections thoroughly.

The back matter includes an appendix that goes through the nitty-gritty of digital production management (XML workflows, for example), an extensive glossary, a huge and invaluable bibliography, and one of the best indexes I have ever had the pleasure of using.

CMOS is a must-have reference work for anyone that works with text.

This book is a history of both vaccination itself and its opponents. The take-away message is that the media is not the place to go for truly balanced and accurate information about science and health. They are far more interested in ratings and catchy headlines than truth. Epidemiology is not something you can just pick up from the University of Google. The author appeals passionately for a return to rational thought and scientific rigour. He doesn’t say that doctors are perfect or that they know everything. His account highlights the mistakes made along the way. But these mistakes are of a PR nature, a failure to properly communicate the risks and benefits associated with vaccination.

Another vital point in his argument is that choosing not to vaccinate is not a purely personal decision—one that doesn’t affect anybody else. Infants not yet old enough for certain vaccines, as well as those for whom vaccines are not effective (immuno-suppressed individuals), are in ever greater numbers contracting (and dying from) these horrible diseases because of the loss of “herd immunity” protection.

I fully recognize the polemics surrounding this debate. (I have family members on both sides.) So I won’t say anything more than that I am personally convinced that the benefits of vaccination far, far outweigh the risks. I highly recommend this book.

Well this is a book for editors. What it is is a style guide specifically for cookbooks. Should you use “green onions” or “scallions”? “Red pepper” or “red bell pepper”? What are the best practices for recipe testing? How should you manage metric vs. imperial measurements? What about copyright and plagiarism?

If you’re putting together a cookbook of any kind, this is an excellent reference for how to approach it. It has a tremendous bibliography that I’m looking forward to culling through. So while the book is not for everybody, if you’re interested in recipes and cookbooks, pick it up at your local library and take a look.

When Pluto got demoted, I remember hearing about it, but I apparently didn’t care enough to do any reading about it. I had no idea how it happened or why. So when I saw this book sitting on the shelf, I felt a responsibility to pick it up. It’s a personal (IMO, too personal) account of the discoveries and events that led up to Pluto’s demise and some of the fallout therefrom. The reality is, the book could have been half the length. The first half was a little painful. No disrespect to Dr. Brown, but I just didn’t care about his childhood, early relationships, and first weekend getaway with his eventual wife. The bits about his daughter in the second half were more bearable for me, but that’s more because I love kids than because they were somehow pertinent to the story. I understand that all that is part of his story, and I respect that, but the reality was I didn’t pick up this book to learn about Dr. Brown. I just wanted to get the details around Pluto’s “death.” So if you do want to get a detailed account of how all that went down, then this book will certainly give you that, but be prepared to skim a lot of more personal details as well.

Well I’m afraid this is it for me and Iain M. Banks. It’s so frustrating! The first two thirds were the best I’ve read of him yet. I loved the characters, the humour was effective, and the action was awesome. He uses flashbacks very effectively to reveal at just the right moment a character’s motivation. The last third, though, just kind of “jumps the shark,” if you will. New characters with inexplicably altruistic motives appear out of nowhere, old characters equally inexplicably go rogue, and the ending answers nothing!

What finally did it for me was the full-blown porn scene thrown gratuitously in the middle of the book. Yes, sexuality is an integral part of who we are, and yes, I’m OK with a certain degree of “mature subject matter,” but really…really? I don’t need things spelled out in quite that level of detail. If you don’t like porn with your speculative fiction, just skip Banks altogether and go read some Alastair Reynolds. You have been warned.

I’ve been holding off writing this review so I could let the book percolate a bit in my head. Regardless of where you might stand theologically, the debate/struggle/discussion this book represents is, in my opinion, vital. I happen to believe strongly in the reality of God, Jesus Christ, and all that that entails. So not surprisingly, a book that encourages a deeper engagement with religion is one I welcome. I have a few pages of notes, but I’m not going to hash it all out here. If you read the book and want to chat about it, drop me a line.

The author is a Methodist minister, and she wrote this book in response to the National Study of Youth and Religion. What the study essentially found is that teens are largely apathetic towards religion (surprise), and that as far as parents are concerned, you get what you are—meaning that, statistically speaking, kids will approach religion the same way their parents do (again, no real surprise there). What Dean decries the most is what she calls “moralistic therapeutic deism” (MTD), which she asserts is supplanting Christianity entirely, and largely because “we” (the churches and their ministers) are letting it. Moralistic therapeutic deism describes the idea of God as butler and/or lifeguard. He is there if you want something, he’s there if you get into real trouble, but otherwise he doesn’t really care about your life or demand anything of you. It includes the idea that all God really wants is for us to feel good about ourselves; again, he makes no demands of us. In one of my favourite quotes, Dean offers an explanation as to why youth don’t engage with God and religion by saying that “they are unlikely to take hold of a God too limp to take hold of them” (p. 36). Dean asserts (and I agree) that the God of the Bible is not weak, detached, or uninvolved. He makes very real demands of us, and in return makes great promises.

Dean attacks MTD over and over again from many different angles. She is brutally introspective and lays a great deal of blame for the success of this philosophy on the churches themselves. She explores how this happened and makes suggestions as to how religious leaders can change. She digs down into some of the data and explores some of the reasons certain religious are more successful than others at engaging their youth. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a major focus of the study, their youth consistently scoring highest or second highest in every measure of religious engagement. She even dedicates an entire chapter just to the Church. As a Mormon myself, I found her analysis fascinating. She does make a couple of outright errors when discussing Church doctrine, but on the whole she is on key.

Whether or not you are religious yourself, I think you would find the book (and the other literature that surrounds it) highly thought provoking. Dean is obviously very passionate, and her writing is strong and clear. I think this is an important discussion to keep alive.

In my new job I edit materials surrounding the regulation of natural resource production in Alberta. While I have a background in science in general, oil and gas is not something I’ve had lots of experience with. Fortunately this book was sitting on my desk. The book is exactly what it says it is. It starts by explaining the geological foundation of hydrocarbons and goes through the technicalities of how these resources are found, assessed, and produced. It goes through all the terminology and is replete with maps, photos, and drawings to make everything as clear as possible. The glossary is awesome. It’s not a quick read (almost 600 pages all said), but it was very informative and well structured. I’m still no expert, but it really helped me wrap my head around the vocabulary and some of the fundamental concepts. The hand drawings can be quite whimsical. I got a good chuckle out of two in particular: figure 20-16 on page 354 has two hand-drawn bunnies standing on either side of the oil pump, and figure 22-1 on page 376 shows a shark attacking a offshore mining rig.

Well this book is more of a novella. It’s grouped with a number of short stories, not of all of which take place in the Culture universe. They do sort of belong together, though. The main story “The State of the Art” is a recounting of the Culture’s encounter with Earth.While I wish Banks wasn’t quite so preoccupied with sex, I do enjoy his take on humanity and culture. His writing is quite engaging. I’ve committed myself to the next book in the series, but only from the library. I’m going to take it one volume at a time.