Greek to Me
Adventures of the Comma Queen
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4.5 • 13 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“One of the most satisfying accounts of a great passion that I have ever read.” —Vivian Gornick, New York Times Book Review
Mary Norris, The New Yorker’s Comma Queen and best-selling author of Between You & Me, has had a lifelong love affair with words. In Greek to Me, she delivers a delightful paean to the art of self-expression through accounts of her solo adventures in the land of olive trees and ouzo. Along the way, Norris explains how the alphabet originated in Greece, makes the case for Athena as a feminist icon, and reveals the surprising ways in which Greek helped form English. Greek to Me is filled with Norris’s memorable encounters with Greek words, Greek gods, Greek wine—and more than a few Greek men.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
It’s abundantly clear that, in her more than three decades working at the New Yorker, Mary Norris has learned a lot about telling a great story. Irreverent, funny, and, yes, educational, Greek To Me is Norris’ love song to the language of The Iliad and to the people, places, and idioms of modern Greece. We loved the copy editor’s historical survey of the Greek alphabet, her colorful anecdotes about the challenges of learning a new language as an adult, and her revealing descriptions of the fun and not-as-fun parts of traveling solo as a woman. Norris’ book would make the perfect vacation companion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New Yorker copy editor Norris (Between You and Me), known for her Comma Queen videos on grammar and style, once again takes readers on an entertaining, erudite, and altogether delightful journey fueled by the love of language. Here, she chronicles her passion for all things Greek, both classical and modern. Denied a chance to study Latin in fifth grade, Norris took that latent enthusiasm for the ancients and applied it to Greek as an adult, even convincing her New Yorker supervisors to subsidize her classical Greek classes as an aid to her copyediting duties. In addition to recounting her scholastic adventures, the book recounts her successive travels through Greece, which she explored with ever-increasing linguistic skill. Norris's lively travel log skillfully meshes autobiographical anecdotes, self-reflection, and explorations of mythology on her first trip, she gets up early during an overnight ferry ride, hoping "to catch Homer's famed rhodod ctylos, the rosy fingers of dawn." At the center of it all is her passion for Greek, a language often "held to be impenetrable," yet which gives her "an erotic thrill, as if every verb and noun had some visceral connection to what it stands for." For those who have long followed the Comma Queen, her latest outing will not disappoint.
Customer Reviews
Really Great!!
This book is simply marvelous. I have to admit, it seems as though it was written for me. I love all things Greek. I have been there twice, the first time in the fall of 1993 when I traveled throughout the country and the western coast of Turkey by myself for 10 weeks using public transportation. I returned for two weeks in the fall of 2009 with my son. Greece is a terrific country and traveling it is such a pleasure. Marry Norris makes it come alive for the reader, and her love and knowledge of the people, language and mythology as well as the cities, archaeological sites and islands is boundless. Such a treasure.
Needs another editing pass
I am enjoying the book, but it needs another pass through the proofreading/copy-editing process. I was very surprised by the number of typos, bad (non-hyphenated) word breaks, mid-paragraph indents, etc. (Very much NOT expected in a Mary Norris book!) I suspect something may have gone awry in the conversion to electronic format?