Thursday, October 08, 2009

The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed by Karen Elizabeth Gordon

For too many of us, it's been years since we learned the basics of grammar in school. But where to go if you really want to understand grammar at this late date. Most grammar books are dry as dust, boring you into submission and seemingly written in Legalese. Stultifying!

But now you can read a grammar book that doesn't shut you out or drive you off. No, it opens itself wide and seduces you in, luring you with pictures of vampires, gargoyles, lunar maidens, werecreatures and other, similar things of the night.

This is no boring book of dry, dusty grammar. Lavishly illustrated with woodcut pictures from the 18th and 19th centuries, the parts of speech are illustrated using clever examples that may hold words unfamiliar to readers, but are so intriguing that it may make them want to run out and look up the unknown words just to find out what they mean.

Best of all this book reminds us that language isn't just cut and dried. It's a living thing that can entice, swoop, fly and seduce. The power of words is a wonderful thing, and the examples used in this book bring that point home. It's almost like a grammar handbook for Goths, but while Goths will love the art and examples, really, this book is for anyone who makes their living by words or wants to understand them without wading through dust-dry rules- oh, they may be the same rules, but the way they are presented is anything but dull.

I recommend this book for anyone who loves language, loves dark creatures, or for those who have spent so many years out of school that they no longer remember what a transitive verb is or the rules of subject-verb agreement. This is a book you'll come back to time and time again, as it makes learning grammar easy. Highly recommended.

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