--Fons Taddic, to Yours Truly

This is not the entry I started working on earlier today. That one is largely concerned with our Letters to the Editor policy at the college paper. But it's already late Sunday night, and I promised myself I'd catch up on this journal before I went to sleep, so I'm going to put that one aside for later in the week.

That being the case, I figure I ought to finally finish going through my reference shelf. After all, there's a limit to how many things I can leave up in the air. (It's a very high limit, but still.)

• The New York Public Library Book of Popular Americana

  I missed this one last time around. As the cover states, this is "An A-to-Z of American popular culture-- From M&M's to the First Amendment. Here, let me choose an entry at random:

  Jersey lightning Applejack brandy. From its distillation in the 1800s in New Jersey.

  Not the greatest example, perhaps, but I did say it would be random. For that matter, here's a list of the other entries on the page:

  Jemima, Jeopardy!, Jersey Devil, Jersey Lily, Jersey Shore, Jesus freak, Jewish Alps, Jewish American Princess, Jewish penicillin, JFK, Jim Crow, Jiminy Cricket, "Jingle Bells"

• The Unofficial U.S. Census, by Tom Heymann

  Not incredibly useful, and I'd almost forgotten that I even owned this. But it does have some interesting bits of trivia. The number of insomniacs in America, the number of adults with braces, percentage of guns in America that are kept loaded, number of smokers, number of child smokers, number of smokers who want to quit, number of balding men... useless stuff, but not entirely devoid of interest. If only it weren't at least eight years out of date, and wildly unofficial.

• The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing (2nd Ed.), by Miller and Swift

  I'll be honest. The first time I took this out from the library (back in 1990, I think, although it might have been 1992), I expected to get a good laugh out of it. Instead, while I did find some points to pick on, and certainly wasn't won over at the time, I had to concede that the authors made a few good points.

  I've gotten closer and closer to the feminist point of view as the years have gone by, and this probably marked the first step along the way. So when I found it for $4 at a used book store, I pounced on it. I've since used it to start indoctrinating my sister in the ways of singular "they" and such.

• Cultural Literacy, by E.D. Hirsch, Jr.

  As far as I can tell, this book has gotten a bad rap, under mistaken premises. Hirsch's basic thesis is that any given culture needs to have a common base of knowledge to draw on, in order for us to be able to interact in a meaningful sort of way. If I say something about "Herculean strength," you should have at least a vague idea that Hercules was a pretty strong guy. Conversely, if you say something about a friend being like "Kramer," I should have at least a vague idea about the guy who keeps dropping by Seinfeld's apartment. Seems logical to me. Fact is, this book goes hand-in-hand with the Book of Popular Americana mentioned above, except that it's not concerned with defining terms. Rather, most of it is concerned with stating and supporting the author's thesis, and the appendix has a long list of terms that are basic enough that Americans really ought to be at least passingly familiar with.

• English as a Second F*cking Language, by Sterling Johnson

  This isn't what I had hoped. It makes for entertaining reading, but has all the substance of a Twinkie. Not especially good as a reference book at all.

• The Borzoi Handbook for Writers, by Crews, Schor, and Hennessy

  This is the handbook we used in the class I helped teach last year. It makes a pretty good reference book for grammar, sentence structure, MLA format, and other issues, and is particularly well suited for learning the rules in the first place, rather than just looking them up.

• The F-Word, edited by Jesse Sheidlower

  An extremely single-minded dictionary, covering just about every form of The Four-Letter Word from "absofuckinglutely" to "tit-fuck." ("zipless fuck" will be included in the second edition of the book, which is currently in the works.) Citations galore. A very useful book to have around if the strongest word in the language fascinates you, as it does me. Also features a very good foreword by Roy Blout, Jr., and a short appendix, listing equivalent terms in other languages.

• Ben Yehuda's Pocket English-Hebrew / Hebrew-English Dictionary

  The title pretty much says it all, I suppose. I can't remember the last time I used this.

• Grammar 101, by Claudia Sorsby

  When I first started helping with that English course, I realized that while I knew how to use the language, I didn't actually know any of the terms involved. It's one thing to be able to write well; it's quite another thing to be able to teach the rules underlying the language. This is the book I used to get a handle on grammar. Very readable, and informative.

• American Slang, edited by Robert L. Chapman, Ph.D.

  An abridged edition of the New Dictionary of American Slang, from HarperCollins. Comes in handy every now and again.

• The New Webster's Grammar Guide
  
• The New Webster's Quotations

  These were... I forget, 79 cents each? a few years back. Actually not too bad; worth the price, anyway.

• The Random House Thesaurus

  Really, really small; we're talking about 3" x 1.5". But very good for the size. Useful at times, especially as I don't have a bigger thesaurus. Yet.

Oh, I might note that the shelf also contains a small (and very cute) stuffed animal version of the Fox, from The Fox and the Hound, and a fire extinguisher. The fire extinguisher has been stategically placed so that it covers English as a Second F*cking Language and The F-Word. After all, members of my family do drop by every now and then...