25 Great Sentences and How They Got That Way
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A guide to the artistry that lifts a sentence from good to great.
We all know the basic structure of a sentence: a subject/verb pair expressing a complete thought and ending with proper punctuation. But that classroom definition doesn’t begin to describe the ways in which these elements can combine to resonate with us as we read, to make us stop and think, laugh or cry.
In 25 Great Sentences and How They Got That Way, master teacher Geraldine Woods unpacks powerful examples of what she instead prefers to define as “the smallest element differentiating one writer’s style from another’s, a literary universe in a grain of sand.” And that universe is very large: the hundreds of memorable sentences gathered here come from sources as wide-ranging as Edith Wharton and Yogi Berra, Toni Morrison and Yoda, T. S. Eliot and Groucho Marx.
Culled from fiction, nonfiction, drama, poetry, song lyrics, speeches, and even ads, these exemplary sentences are celebrated for the distinctive features—whether of structure, diction, connection/comparison, sound, or extremes—that underlie their beauty, resonance, and creativity. With dry humor and an infectious enjoyment that makes her own sentences a pleasure to read, Woods shows us the craft that goes into the construction of a memorable sentence. Each chapter finishes with an enticing array of exercises for those who want to test their skill at a particular one of the featured twenty-five techniques, such as onomatopoeia (in the Sound section) or parallelism (in the Structure section).
This is a book that will be treasured by word nerds and language enthusiasts, writers who want to hone their craft, literature lovers, and readers of everything from song lyrics and speeches to novels and poetry.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This handy, practical guide prompts would-be writers to think critically about how to create effective and meaningful sentences. Woods (Grammar for Dummies), former director of the Horace Mann School's Independent Study program, selects examples from novelists (Toni Morrison, Ann Beattie), journalists (Red Smith), poets , and public figures (Neil Armstrong, JFK). She opens each chapter with one of the promised "25 great sentences," providing a brief analysis of how it illustrates a certain literary device and then additional example sentences to reinforce her point. These include parallelism in Li-Young Lee's poem "From Blossoms," shifting word meaning in Joyce's Ulysses ("Love loves to love love"), and onomatopoeia in Watty Piper's The Little Engine That Could. Woods's selections mix classroom staples (Romeo and Juliet) and contemporary classics (Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me), and she also displays a winning enthusiasm for language, as when she illustrates the coinage of new words with Phil Rizzuto's invention of the verb nonchalanting, or provides a sidebar on the tangled etymology of the word beatnik. This volume should be helpful for students, and older readers will recall memories of favorite English teachers leading them through the intricacies of writing.