Recommendations from Ms. Englart
The Dictionary
An old-fashioned (not online) dictionary is the coolest book. Sure, it lists all the current English words with their definitions, etymologies, and usages. But what I find most interesting is the front and back matter (the beginning and ending pages). If you’ve only used the dictionary to look up words you’ll be very surprised to find up to 100 pages of really cool information in a good dictionary. I think the most interesting part is the Usage Panel. This is a group of people--experts in various fields, such as languages, science, history, math, religion, medicine and much more--who agree together on which words should and shouldn’t be in the dictionary and exactly how they will be defined correctly. There are so many famous people on these panels from every field, such as Jamaica Kincaid, Carl Sagan, Bart Giamatti, Antonin Scalia, and hundreds more. You can find essays on language and how it relates to gender, social justice, and changing attitudes over time. You can also find all the parts of speech and how to use them, as well as grammar rules, alphabets from other languages, dozens of pages of roots, historical information about the development of the English language, and so much more. If you have a dictionary, you will never be bored; there’s always something to think about. |
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
By Anne Fadiman This book changed my thinking permanently, though at first I didn’t understand the title, and the topic didn’t seem interesting or related to my life in any way. I had to read the book for a class and that’s the thing about life--sometimes the very thing you have an aversion to can be the thing that helps you learn the most. I have gotten so much from this book: That as a creative person and an intellectual, I should follow my interests no matter where they lead; I can make them make sense later. That it makes no sense to judge other people, cultures, and belief systems from outside of their historical, social, and religious contexts. That there are many ways to love your child and that the typical American way is not the only—or necessarily the best—way. That even when people mean well and try to help, their help is not always helpful. That listening is often much more important than talking. That there is so much more going on in this world at any given moment than any of us are aware of. That there are usually reasons for things that don’t initially make sense. Anne Fadiman (who now teaches Creative Writing at Yale, by the way) is amazing at making one family’s heart-wrenching story so relevant for so many others. I’m still learning lessons from this book more than a decade after reading it for the first time. I have so much more respect and even admiration for things I hadpreviously judged as ignorant or bad. As it turns out, I have often been the ignorant one. |