Literary Contest Final Clue (#5)! Guess the Title of the Best Book I Read in 2006

It’s here: the last clue in the first One-Minute Book Reviews Literary Contest! You still have a chance win a copy of John Carey’s Pure Pleasure: A Guide to the 20th Century’s Most Enjoyable Books by identifying the title and author of the best book I read in 2006. Leave a comment with your guess on any contest post (or write to oneminutebookreviews@hotmail.com and give me permission to post your comment for you) by 8 a.m. Eastern Time Jan. 1.

The first four clues appeared daily starting on Thursday. I’ll post a review of the book on Jan. 1 and the name of the winner on Jan. 2. Here’s the last clue:

Clue #5: The author of this biography is a man who shares a name with a “lordly” English poet.

Watch this site for other contests. In 2007 you’ll be able to win books just by linking to One-Minute Book Reviews from another site. And you’ll be able to win bestsellers and other books reviewed on this blog. This is a great way to get free books to consider for a book club or donate to a school, library or day-care center with a small book budget. So if you don’t want to enter, why not send the link for this site to a friend?

To avoid missing these contests, please bookmark www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Janice Harayda
© 2006 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

The Best Grammar Book for Students (And Parents Who Are Checking the Homework Assignments)

Patricia T. O’Conner makes it fun to learn the rules that – not which – your child needs to know

Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English. By Patricia T. O’Conner. Riverhead, 256 pp., $14, paperback. Ages 13–adult.

By Janice Harayda

A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail note from a parent who had a grammar question. His English teachers had told him that when two parts of a sentence are joined by and or but, you should always separate them with a comma. His teenage son’s teachers said his teachers were wrong. Who was right? Answer: the son’s teachers. You use a comma to separate two parts of a sentence when both have a subject and verb. You don’t use a comma when they don’t. I gave my friend this example of two correctly punctuated sentences:

I went to the store, and I bought some bread.
I went to the store and bought some bread.

If you and your child are wrestling with questions like these, you need Patricia T. O’Conner’s Woe Is I, the best grammar book for students (and their parents). Woe Is I has all the hallmarks of an ideal grammar book for modern families. It’s comprehensive enough to answer any question you might have. It’s authoritative without handing down archaic rules that no longer make sense. It has an index and chapter titles that make it easy to find the answers you need, whether you wonder when to use that and which or whether it’s ever all right to use alright (no). And O’Conner has a conversational — but not sloppy – writing style that makes her book fun to use. A chapter on commas, for example, is called “Comma Sutra.”

Woe is I also has things that most grammar books don’t. One is a chapter on clichés that lists nearly 100 overworked words or phrases and what’s wrong with each. Some of my favorites lines from it:

“Bone of contention. This expression is getting osteoporosis.
“Generation gap. An even worse cliché, Generation X, is already geriatric.
“It goes without saying. Then don’t say it.
“Team player. When your boss says you should be more of a team player, that means she wants you to take on more of her work.
“To the manner born. If you’re going to use a cliché, respect it. This Shakespearean phrase (it comes from Hamlet) means ‘accustomed to’ or ‘familiar with’ a manner of living. It is not ‘to the manor born’ and has nothing to do with manor houses

O’Conner is too permissive for my tastes on some issues, such as whether you can use since to mean because and who instead of whom. But she offers so much good advice not just on grammar but on writing in general that I put Woe Is I on the required reading list for a college journalism class I taught recently. If you think your child could never enjoy grammar, listen to what one student said about after reading the first chapter I assigned: “I love this book! It’s the funniest textbook I’ve had to read.”

Best line: “English is a glorious invention, one that gives us endless possibilities for expressing ourselves. Grammar is there to help, to clear up ambiguities and prevent misunderstandings.”

Worst line: O’Conner says it’s fine to use since to mean “because.” But she admits that this could cause problems in a phrase such as, “Since we spoke, I’ve had second thoughts”: “In that case, since could mean either ‘from the time that’ or ‘because,’ so it’s better to be more precise.” Similar problems could occur in a lot of other situations. So why not stick to the rule that calls for using since only to indicate a time period (such as, “since Thursday”)?

Recommended if … you could use help with your grammar, English, or writing.

Caveat reader: This review was based on the hardcover edition. Woe Is I is a book for adults that is also appropriate for students in the eighth grade and above. It may appeal to some sixth- and seventh-graders who read well.

Published: 2003 (Riverhead hardcover), 2004 (Riverhead paperback).

FYI: A former member of the staff of The New York Times Book Review, O’Conner answers grammar questions on her Web site www.grammarphobia.com. She also appears on National Public Radio as a language expert.

© 2006 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

Literary Contest Clue Number #4 — Only Two More Days to Guess the Best Book I Read in 2006

Only two more days to win a free copy of John Carey’s Pure Pleasure: A Guide to the 20th Century’s Most Enjoyable Books!

You can win a copy of John Carey’s Pure Pleasure: A Guide to the 20th Century’s Most Enjoyable Books by becoming the first person to guess correctly the best book I read in 2006. The first clue appeared on Thursday, and a new clue will appear every day through Dec. 31 (tomorrow). I will review the book and give a short excerpt from it on Jan. 1 and announce the winner on Jan. 2.

To enter, leave a comment on any contest post with title and author of the book you think I read. If you get “error” messages when you try to leave a comment, send an e-mail note to oneminutebookreviews@hotmail.com with your guess, and give me permission to post it for you under the name on your e-mail address. If you do this, I will post your guess for you, and will get credit for having sent it at the time on your e-mail, not the time I post it.

Clue #4: Here’s one of the most famous lines written by the female author who is the subject of the biography you’re trying to guess:

“ … for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

This is one of my favorite lines in all of literature.

Janice Harayda

© 2006 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

Your Management Sucks: No, This Book Does

Looking for a manager to emulate? How about Donald Rumsfeld?

Your Management Sucks: Why You Have to Declare War on Yourself … and Your Business. By Mark Stevens. Crown Business, 302 pp., $25.

By Janice Harayda

Business books are among the cesspools of the publishing industry. For every Liar’s Poker or Barbarians at the Gate, there are countless volumes that take sewerage disposal to new depths.

The latest deposit in the cesspool comes from Mark Stevens, the CEO of a “global marketing firm” and author of the earlier – what, you haven’t heard of it? – Your Marketing Sucks. Stevens argues that managers must “declare war” on themselves and their companies to survive in a cutthroat marketplace. And early on he gives an example of a leader who embodies his philosophy — the chief architect of the war that has killed nearly 3,000 members of the U.S. military in Iraq. As secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld shook up the Pentagon, so that “cliques of generals learned the hard way (for Rumsfeld and for them, because these conflicts are always bloody) that the secretary was driving through their barricades.”

The tin ear Stevens shows here – for language and human suffering – doesn’t go away in chapters on developing your “killer app” and unleashing “your Manhattan Project.” He assaults you with so many clichés, you begin to think that the Guinness world-records people should add a category for him. One stupefying passage deals with what happens when companies focus on small goals instead of big ones:

“I think of it as the shooting-fish-in-barrel syndrome … When a business grows beyond initial projections, once it appears to defy gravity and build a powerful momentum, managers can become intoxicated by this magic-carpet ride and believe that from that moment on the future is golden. Guaranteed. A sure thing. And that’s when they put the plane on autopilot and a hard landing looms in the not-so-distant future.”

Stevens believes that “weak managers” tell people they can spend time “with their kids every night.” But research has shown that employees in their 20s and 30s care far more about such issues than their parents did, and options such as flextime help to retain high performers. If Stevens is aware of the studies, he gives no indication of it, and such omissions make his book read a times as though it emerged from a time capsule buried in the heyday of some of the people he holds up as models – Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Lee Iacocca, Carl Icahn, Estée Lauder, George Patton, and Harry Truman. Your Management Sucks might be a battle cry, but it’s a call to the kind of war that Donald Rumsfeld scripted, and is becoming more unpopular every day.

Best Line: “When I say, ‘Your management sucks,’ I’m talking to myself as well.” You said it, not me.

Worst Line (Tie): Winner No. 1: “Forget the horse that looks like a camel because the committee created it. We’ve heard that too many times.” Then why is it in this book? Winner No. 2: “To hell with what clients expect to hear. To tell with what they want to hear. Shock them with intelligence! With epiphanies! With the element of surprise!” Better still, shock them by saying something that makes sense! Instead of inanities like, “Shock them … with the element of surprise!”

Published: May 2006

© 2006 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

Literary Contest Clue #3

The latest clue in the One-Minute Book Reviews New Year’s Literary Contest …

Would you like to win a copy of John Carey’s Pure Pleasure: A Guide to the 20th Century’s Most Enjoyable Books? Be the first person to leave a comment on this site that identifies the author and title of the best book I read in 2006. (You can find a review of Pure Pleasure in the “Essays and Reviews” category at right.) The first clue appeared on Thursday, and a new clue will be posted each day through Dec. 31. Clues may be posted before or after the review-of-the-day.

On January 1’ll review the book and provide a brief excerpt from it. I’ll announce the winner on January 2. If you haven’t read the book, you’ll be able to figure it out from the clues if you’re willing to do a little sleuthing on the Web or elsewhere.

If you can’t leave a comment because of a software blockade, you can e-mail your guess to oneminutebookreviews@hotmail.com. I will post your comment for you if you give me permission to use the screen name for your e-mail address. You will get credit for the time that appears on your e-mail, not the time when I post the comment. Thank you for visiting One-Minute Book Reviews!

Clue #3: Henry James admired the subject of this book, but described her as “horse-faced.” We don’t know what animal she thought James’s face resembled.

Janice Harayda
© 2006 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

Literary Contest Clue #2: Guess the Best Book I Read in 2006

Can you guess the best book I read in 2006?

The first clue appeared on Dec. 27 on One-Minute Book Reviews, and a new clue will appear every day through Dec. 31. The first person to leave a comment on the site with the correct title and author of the book will win a copy of John Carey’s Pure Pleasure: A Guide to the 20th Century’s Most Enjoyable Books. A review of the book and a short excerpt will appear on January 1, and the winner will be announced on January 2.

If you study the clues, you’ll be able to figure out which book I’m talking about or make an intelligent guess — for example, by scrolling through related Amazon listings or an online card catalog – even if you haven’t read the book. For example, if a clue said that the best book I read in 2006 began with the words “Call me Ishmael,” you could figure out that it was Moby-Dick, right? The clues in this contest won’t be that obvious. But you may see a few lines from a book that will tip you off to the answer.

If you would like to leave a comment but are having trouble getting past the WordPress software blockade, send your comment to oneminutebookreviews@hotmail.com along with a line giving me permission to paste-in your comment under the screen name on your e-mail. Your comment will be credited at the time listed on the e-mail, not when I post it here. Many apologies for any inconveniences to non-WordPress users.

Hint: Keep in mind that I said I read the book in 2006, not that it was published in 2006.

Clue #2: The lead-ins to programs on Masterpiece Theatre are usually harmless enough to draw little criticism from reviewers. A rare exception occurred when Russell Baker introduced a miniseries based on perhaps the most famous book by the author who is the subject of this biography. Some critics accused him of pandering to television viewers.

Today’s book review appears below this post and deals with James Johnson’s Soul Sanctuary, a celebration of black worship styles such as the “Watch Night” services that take place on New Year’s Eve.

Janice Harayda
© 2006 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

Jason Johnson’s Celebration of Black Worship Styles

A contemporary photographic portrait of famous and little-known black churches from New York City to Los Angeles

Soul Sanctuary: Images of the African-American Worship Experience. By Jason Miccolo Johnson. Foreword by Gordon Parks. Introduction by Dr. Cain Hope Felder. Essays by Barbranda Lumpkins Walls, Rev. Cardes H. Brown, Jr., and Rev. Dr. Lawrence N. Jones. Afterword by Bishop John Hurst Adams. Epilogue by Rev. Dr. J. Beecher Hicks, Jr. Bulfinch, 159 pp., $29.95.

By Janice Harayda

On New Year’s Eve, many black churches will hold Watch Night services, a tradition that began in African-American worship on Dec. 31, 1862, the day before Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. On that date, slaves gathered in their congretations to await confirmation that they would soon be free.

Photographer James Miccolo Johnson celebrates the Watch Night tradition and others in Soul Sanctuary, a striking portrait in words and black-and-white pictures of worship in black Protestant and Catholic Churches from New York City to Los Angeles. Photography books often have a bare-bones text that does little to enrich an understanding of their images. Soul Sanctuary is exceptional for its thoughtful essays by three Biblical scholars, two ministers, a journalist, and the late photographer Gordon Parks. These essays explain standard practices such as the call and response between the pulpit and the pew (during which minister’s “Ain’t He all right?” may bring the response, “Yeah!”).

Soul Sanctuary also shows, in words and pictures, how black churches are changing. Newer forms of worship include “praise step teams” that are especially popular among students and “reminiscent of high school drill teams.” Churches may have gyms, classrooms, day-care centers, computer labs, recording studios, and conference centers. Some of the largest have parking lots so far away from the sanctuary, they use golf carts to ferry members to services.

All of this makes Soul Sanctuary an excellent introduction to African-American worship, and a book that keeps its focus on spirituality, not history or architecture or personalities. Those New Year’s Eve services evoke more than the joy of the Emancipation Proclamation: “Watch Night is also a time to give thanks to God for making it through another year and to pray for a better year to come.”

Best line: Each major section of the book begins with one or more Bible verses, and the one that best fits its spirit is: “This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118: 24 (King James Version)

Worst line: “Baptized believers have the right to participate in the sacrament of Holy Communion … usually small wafers or crushed crackers (the bread, symbolizing Christ’s body) and grape juice (the wine, symbolizing his blood) from gleaming gold or silver trays.” This describes only the Protestant tradition, though the book also includes Catholic churches. Catholics believe that the bread and wine are the actual body and blood of Christ, known as the doctrine of transubstantion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation

Recommended … without reservations, particularly as a gift for a minister or lay leader of a black, white, or racially mixed congregation.

Editor: Michael L. Sand

Published: April 2006 www.soulsanctuarybook.com

© 2006 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

Literary Contest! Guess the Best Book I Read in 2006 and Win a Signed Copy of John Carey’s Pure Pleasure: A Guide to the 20th Century’s Most Enjoyable Books

Start your year by winning a great collection of essays on modern classics … or helping a friend win by forwarding this post

On New Year’s Day I will review and post a short excerpt from the best book I read in 2006. I will provide a clue to the identity of the book every day from now through Dec. 31 on One-Minute Book Reviews in addition to a book review.

If you think you know the book, leave a comment on a post that contains a clue, such as this post, and include the title and author of the book. I will sign a copy of John Carey’s Pure Pleasure: A Guide to the 20th Century’s Most Enjoyable Books and send it to the first person who correctly guesses the author and title of the mystery book. (You can find a review of Carey’s book archived in the “Essays and Reviews” category on this blog.) In order to win, you must include the full correct title and author’s name as they appear on the cover, title page, or a listing in a library catalog or on Amazon.

I will announce the winner on January 2 and, if he or she has come to this blog through a link from another site, I will also mention and link to the site.

Ardent readers should have less trouble with this contest than a young cousin and I had on Christmas Eve when we tried to get to the hangman game that reveals the title of the next Harry Potter novel on J.K. Rowling’s site, www.jkrowling.com. (Yes, we knew people had posted directions to thegame on the Web, but we wanted to do it ourselves.) So if you don’t want to try to win the book, why not forward a link to www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com to a literary friend who might enjoy it?

To avoid missing clues, please bookmark this site or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Clue #1: The book is a biography of a female author.

Janice Harayda
© 2006 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

Coming This Week (Dec. 24) on One-Minute Book Reviews

The following books are tentatively scheduled to be reviewed during the week of Dec. 24 on One-Minute Book Reviews. This blog will provide a new clue to the New Year’s Literary Contest each day from Dec. 27–Dec. 31.

Monday: Merry Christmas. (A review of Kay Ryan’s The Niagara River: Poems, which would have have appeared Dec. 25, was posted as an extra review on Saturday, Dec. 23.)
Tuesday: A House Somewhere: Tales of Life Abroad. Edited by Don George and Anthony Sattin (Essays, Lonely Planet) Posted
Wednesday, Post #1: I Don’t Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother. By Allison Pearson. (Novel, Anchor Books) Posted
Wednesday, Post #2: Introducing the New Year’s Literary Contest that gives you a chance to win a copy of John Carey’s Pure Pleasure: A Guide to the 20th Century’s Most Enjoyable Books
Thursday: Soul Sanctuary: Images of the African-American Worship Experience. By Jason Miccolo Johnson. Foreword by Gordon Parks. Clue #2 New Year’s Literary Contest
Friday: Clue # 3 New Year’s Literary Contest
Saturday: Children’s Corner Clue #4 New Year’s Literary Contest
Sunday: Clue #5 (Final Clue) New Year’s Literary Contest

Reviews on this site typically alternate on a female author/male author basis with reviews of books by women appearing on Monday and Wednesdays and reviews of books by men appearing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This format may vary during holiday weeks.

The New Year’s Resolutions of Kate Reddy, Working Mother

Allison Pearson satirizes sexual double standards at work and at home

I Don’t Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother. By Allison Pearson. Anchor, 338 pp., $13.95, paperback.

By Janice Harayda

Working mothers! Can you identify with any of the following New Year’s resolutions?

“Adjust work-life balance for happier, healthier existence … Spend more time with your children … Don’t take [husband] for granted … Attempt to be size 10 … Call friends, hope they remember you.”

These are the resolutions of Kate Reddy, the high-octane fund manager and heroine of Allison Pearson’s merciless send-up of sexual double standards, I Don’t Know How She Does It. Kate believes she was “educated for something better than the gentle warming of Barbie pasta.” But her firm’s diversity initiatives are sham, her young children “have not grasped the principle of Quality Time,” and when her nanny calls in sick, the only available temp is a “close relative of Slobodan Milosevic.” Kate’s husband means well, but his good intentions are destined to count for only so much “until they programmed a man to notice you were out of toilet paper.”

One of the great virtues of this novel is that Pearson understands – and lampoons – the cultural forces that hold women back, such as diversity programs designed to more protect firms from lawsuits than to end discrimination. She never suggests that Kate would have fewer problems if she had a different husband or children or had spent years in therapy. But she hedges her bets with an over-the-top subplot about Kate’s father that that shows that not only does her heroine work with cretins – her father was pretty awful, too. Pearson tries to connect the two ideas by suggesting that women who succeed in finance tend to be “Daddy’s girls.” This may be true, but she tells us this instead of showing it convincingly, and at times causes the novel to cross the line from satire into farce. And when the inevitable marital crisis erupts, Kate’s husband takes action too cruel for a man who cast as saintly until them.

Even so, nearly every page of the novel has a sparkling or trenchant observation that helps to make it the best send-up of sexism at work of the new millennium. Every reader may have his or her own favorite line. Here’s one that fits a holiday week: “Like any other family, the Shattocks have their Christmas traditions. One tradition is that I buy all the presents for my side of the family and I buy all the presidents for our children and our two godchildren and I buy Richard’s presents and presents for Richard’s parents and his brother Peter and Peter’s wife Cheryl and their three kinds and Richard’s Uncle Alf … If Richard remembers, and depending on late opening hours, he buys a present for me.”

Best line: Here’s one that involves Kate Reddy’s 18-month-old son: “Ben has discovered his penis. Lying on the changing table, he wears the rapt, triumphant expression of a being who has just found the on-off switch for the solar system.”

Worst line: “My dad has always confused sentimentality with intimacy.” This is telling, not showing. And that “intimacy” is one of Pearson’s rare descents into psychobabble.

Recommended if … you have incipient carpal tunnel syndrome from all the packages you wrapped while your husband was watching The Game.

Editors: Jordan Pavlin at Knopf, Alison Samuel at Chatto, and Caroline Michel at Vintage.

Published: October 2002 (Knopf hardcover edition). September 2003 (first Anchor Books edition).

© 2006 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.