Review: The Elements of Style by Strunk and White

Some people learn best when information comes in the form of numbered rules one ought to follow. This guide is for them. 

Other people resent rules passed down from on high when the explanations for these rules are sparse, subjective or arbitrary. Perhaps more provocatively, I propose this guide is also for them! 

Strunk & White are very opinionated in which phrases or words should be discarded altogether ("In the last analysis. A bankrupt expression.") but in making the resentful reader conscious of the vacuity of many commonplace phrases and defending their favourites to themselves, the reader will nonetheless become a more conscious writer.

This style guide is from a different era, and shows its age. The authors often lean on biblical verses as examples of good writing, presuming the reader is familiar with this material. There is a lengthy section advising the reader in how to best take advantage of a word processor and how to avoid its pitfalls. Written communication has changed with the evolution of technology (see Gretchen McCullough's Because Internet) and there are aspects of effective communication in the 21st century that are not covered--formal communication from an employer to its employees may even include emojis. That said, advice like "omit needless words" is timeless, and applies more than ever in the character-limited domain of twitter.

Review: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

 It's early in the year, but I think this might end up being my favorite read of 2020.

This really is a beautiful book. The political intrigue and murder mystery are tightly plotted, and the pacing is good, but really, the book is about so much more than that.

As a language nerd, I very much appreciated the theme of culture shaping language, and language shaping how we perceive ourselves and our histories.

"Teixcalaan has seen eighty years of peace. Three of your lives, stacked up, since the last time one part of the world tried to destroy the rest of it."

There were border skirmishes reported every week. There'd been an outright rebellion put down on the Odile System just a few days back. Teixcalaan was not peaceful. But Mahit thought she understood the difference Six Direction was so fixated on: those were skirmishes that brought war to outside the universe, to uncivilized places. The word he'd used for "world" was the word for "city." The one that derived from the verb for "correct action".

I loved the philosophical elements of what does it mean to be a person? It was neat to explore this particularly through the eyes of Mahit, whose perspective on this answer is probably quite different from our own. Is personality just endocrine responses? Is a person just the sum of their memories?

I loved that this book discussed the biases inherent to artificial intelligence - that there is no such thing as a neutral algorithm.

There was an originating purpose for an algorithm, however distant in its past -- a reason some human person made it, even if it had evolved and folded in on itself and transformed. A city run by Ten Pearl's algorithm had Ten Pearl's initial interests embedded in it. A city run by an algorithm designed to respond to Teixcalaanli desires was not innocent of those same Teixcalaanli desired, magnified, twisted by machine learning.

Perhaps not since I've read Robin Hobb's Fool's Fate have I felt the same level of emotional tension while reading a book. Mahit's sense of loneliness and abandonment by her imago. The strange mix of both loving the cultural output of the Empire and the very real fear of the Empire destroying her home. The irony of self-discovery through culture that is foreign to your own, and in a foreign language. The mix of pride in being complimented in mastering imperial customs combined with the sadness in being subjugated and knowing that no matter your mastery you will never 'belong' in the Empire.

The dialogue, particularly between Three Seagrass and Twelve Azalea, was great. Really enjoyed their dry humor and banter (while also really feeling Mahit's envy of their friendship).

I wish I enjoyed the poetry in the book. I often felt like I didn't quite get it - but maybe that was the point. Like Mahit, the nuances of Teizcalaanli art is too alien.

I liked the way romance was weaved in - explicitly polyamorous and non-heteronormative. Love shapes the people and the events in small ways, rather than being massive story-shifting forces. But nor is the romance just orthogonal to the rest of the plot. The reveal of Yskandr being both in love with the emperor and with Nineteen Adze is a little thread that adds support and tension to the web of events, but it's not the keystone that the whole structure of the intrigue relies on. Even if he hadn't been in love with those people, his maneuvering could have made sense. But, the relationships also feel very real and human, and messy in the way those kinds of things can be messy.

I enjoyed that much of the rest of the universe was left mysterious. It makes me curious to discover what the next book will be about.

Review: Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch

Rating: 5/5

Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language is very much a quick and approachable intro into basic linguistics concepts, and how these concepts apply to the development of internet-specific communication mores. Although the culture of the internet develops so quickly, by anchoring her observations/study about the internet in theory, Gretchen McCulloch really gives you the tools to think about new developments in internet communication. For example the etiquette of social distancing Zoom calls isn't covered in the book, but now I have Thoughts about what she might have written. I think this approach will also give the book a little more staying power - it isn't a description of the rules of a particular meme, or a guide to when and how to use phrases like "I can't even". It's much more about how technology and communication needs intertwine to produce new quirks of informal internet speak. Her writing tone is funny, thoughtful, and informative. I loved it.

I think my favourite part of the reading experience was recognizing a bit of a kindred spirit in McCulloch. For example, she's daydreamed about a research project involving the variation in the language of "missing cat" posters around Montreal neighbourhoods. She's a "full internet" person, like me, and fluent in internet culture. Many of the aspects of internet communication she highlighted are things I've used, seemingly naturally, and then picked apart and analyzed. (Why did I use "hahaha" there, "hahahaaaa" there, but "lol" in the response before? Why two :joy: emojis there? It feels better to correct my phone's autocorrect there to use a lowercase to start the sentence... but why?) Her nerdy delight in research and understanding the world around her was familiar and contagious.

Because Internet goes a little deeper than just face-value text frequency studies like "which letters are most likely to be repeated/elongated." There's also examination of how communities form, how people share and interpret intense emotions, how people express and develop their senses of identity, how different people encounter and use the internet in their lives. There's no pearl-clutching about the kids these days not knowing how to write well - and in fact, she combats this myth with thorough examination of casual versus formal writing styles over the years.

There's a few areas she touches on but doesn't really go into that I would have liked to hear more about. For example, she dates the end of "Advice Animals" memes to around 2014, but doesn't explain what contributed towards their demise. I've thought about this before - I suspect reddit removing the subreddit from its "default subs" led to its sharp drop in popularity, but I have a feeling that this meme format was already on the downward slope. This could have been an interesting avenue to discuss in more depth how the decisions of social networking companies shape language development. She mentions very briefly the alt-right's use of the pepe frog, but not how their ironic use of rapidly changing memes and slang and extreme irony allow them to pretend they were less hateful than they were, and communicate somewhat unseen with each other in the rest of the internet.

The author read the audiobook, and I liked her reading of it.