Review by New York Times Review
THE RECOVERING: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, by Leslie Jamison. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $18.99.) Jamison, adding to a large group of addiction memoirs, maps her own recovery while considering the relationship between creativity and substance abuse. The emotional firepower of the book comes in its second half, after she has embraced sobriety; our critic, Dwight Garner, called this section "close to magnificent, and genuinely moving." LOVE AND RUIN, by Paula McLain. (Ballantine, $17.) McLain's latest novel, about the marriage between the journalist Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway, takes up the question that vexed (and probably doomed) their relationship: Why must a woman choose between her career and what her husband wants her to be? McLain drew on primary sources to develop her fiery protagonist. A WORLD WITHOUT 'WHOM': The Essential Guide to Language in the BuzzFeed Age, by Emmy J. Favilla. (Bloomsbury, $18.) The BuzzFeed copy chief discusses her plan to codify language in a digital era, balancing a need for logic with flexibility to account for how people actually talk. Along with a look at the rules she devised, the book offers a guide to the quandaries we face as the way we communicate online reshapes language itself. MADNESS IS BETTER THAN DEFEAT, by Ned Beauman. (Vintage, $17.) Emboldened by "fungal clairvoyance" after inhaling mold in an old temple, a C.I.A. agent tells the story of a fateful meeting in the Honduran jungle in 1938. The novel's twists and turns touch on everything from colonialism to conspiracy theories. Our reviewer, Helene Stapinski, called the story "a kitchen-sink sendup of spy novels, 1930s Hollywood and screwball newspaper comedies, with a pinch of Pynchon thrown in for fun." ENLIGHTENMENT NOW: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, by Steven Pinker. (Penguin, $18.) Pinker sets out to persuade pessimists - people disturbed by today's threats like climate change and the rise of authoritarian populism across the globe - of one thing: that life has never been better, both in the West and in developing countries. The Harvard psychologist marshals an impressive array of data to back up his claim. ETERNAL LIFE, by Dara Horn. (Norton, $15.95.) When readers meet Rachel, she's a suburban great-grandmother in the 21st century. But that life is only the latest in a string of reincarnations, the consequences of a promise she made in Roman-occupied Jerusalem some 2,000 years earlier. Horn's elegant novel explores how Rachel's immortality impedes her ability to be fully, truly alive.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 27, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
On her way to becoming global copy chief for BuzzFeed, Favilla authored the company's style guide, which created a splash when published openly online in 2014. Favilla's first book is a show-and-tell for that guide. She describes the guide's evolution and BuzzFeed's stylistic choices, along with their reasoning, all in a narrative that demonstrates those rules in action. She provides a cheat sheet for cutting-edge terms. Many principles are ethical and moral in nature for example, using people-first language. Others incorporate the playful and profound effects of the Internet and social media on language, which is alive, according to Favilla. While it is hard not to agree, there's an irony in her argument: she chants follow your heart to everyone except those whose hearts tell them to adhere to prescriptivism over the descriptivism she espouses. (What fun it would have been to see this intelligent author take on that Gordian knot!) BuzzFeed's style guide lifts up what matters in language, namely clarity and respect for others, and grants permission to dismiss those hobgoblins disguised as rules. --Dziuban, Emily Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This witty and informative guide to language and contemporary usage, written by BuzzFeed copy chief Favilla, is a refreshingly modern antidote to the staid style guides of times past. Proceeding from "the fundamental fact that language always evolves," Favilla describes the rationale by which she created a style guide for her employer that would accommodate the rapid shifts in language and style rampant on the internet (which, as she notes, was until recently capitalized) and in social media. Her subjects are wide-ranging and include proper forms of address and designation in our diverse society and the internet's effect on the use of punctuation (the usually absent period in tweets becomes an indicator of aggression when used, for example). She sides with descriptivists who believe that "language should be defined by those who use it" against the prescriptivists who believe "there are rules you simply must follow" and supports her recommendations with wisdom gleaned from other style guides and screen captures of email (not "e-mail") exchanges and web memes. Favilla's style is light and breezy, which only makes it easier to absorb the serious import of her advice. This is the rare style manual that is as entertaining as it is instructive. Agent: Charlotte Sheedy, Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Favilla's (global copy chief, BuzzFeed) observational guide to diction on the Internet begins with a playful, humble introduction in which the author downplays the "dogma" of a style guide by harpooning what she calls "the sacred prescriptivism/descriptivism dichotomy." Some featured examples are the redundancy of "reasons why" in contrast with the tendency of language arbiters to acknowledge how people actually speak (and thus how they may write). Favilla follows such explorations with insights on loaded diction, including "actress" vs "actor," and suggests avoiding the term millennials completely. This work also contains an official BuzzFeed word list with examples such as "judgy" (to stand as an adjective), "shit ton" (as two words, not hyphenated or used as a compound), and even "mac `n' cheese." VERDICT A smart and amusing work that will appeal to those who enjoy the fun point of contact between language's inherent ambiguity and its cultural and technological biases.-Jesse A. Lambertson, Georgetown Univ. Libs. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An irreverent grammar guru advises, "follow your heart."Favilla, copy chief of the digital news site BuzzFeed and author of its style manual, makes her literary debut in "a book about feelings, mostlynot about rules." Language is fluid, she rightly notes, and new venuesTwitter, Snapchat, Facebook, email, texts, blogshave dramatically changed the way people communicate. Take the comma splice, which is back, writes the author, "because sometimes a pause between the two clausesjust isn't what you're going for; forgoing punctuation to indicate a breath in between may effect, for instance, an air of exasperation or urgency." Still, Favilla advises that before deliberately creating a comma spliceor flouting any grammatical conventionthe writer should "take the temperature of a room." Much of the author's advice has to do with BuzzFeed's style preferences, such as capitalization, formatting numbers, the use of the subjunctive ("as an intrinsically cynical person," she writes, "I am a fan of the subjunctive mood"), the choice between "who" and "that," and the correct use of "whom." Some readers may not need her advice about creating pithy headlines or avoiding sexist, racist, or otherwise exclusionary language in publications, but for anyone perplexed by the plethora of acronyms and abbreviations, Favilla offers several appendices: the BuzzFeed Style Guide Word List (from A-list to Ziploc); the BuzzFeed UK Style Guide Word List (from aeroplane to yoghurt); Terms You Should Know (BRB: be right back; TL;DR: too long; didn't read; and the useful IRL: in real life). She also imparts advice about editing for an international audience. Quizzes, illustrations, and reproductions of sometimes-whimsical chats between Favilla and her colleagues appear throughout. For controversial grammar, spelling, or usage topics, she often includes the results of BuzzFeed reader pollse.g., is it roller coaster or rollercoaster? How do you make a possessive for proper names ending in S? What about the use of literally instead of figuratively? A lighthearted take on communicating in the digital age. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
