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A review by chelsasquatch
Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies by Marilyn McEntyre
3.0
I don't know about all of the positive reviews that this book has gotten, because dear, sweet Jesus, it rubbed me the wrong way.
The three stars come from the fact that I agree wholeheartedly with the ideas and concepts McEntyre is putting forward. Caring for Words has its priorities straight and in all the right places.
However, I have two main criticisms (or loud gripes, depending on if you've talked to me in person about this) of this book.
One, this book is geared 100% toward people who don't need to hear what it has to say. If you pick up Caring for Words, you already probably care about words. I was assigned to read it in a 400-level English class. I care about words enough to get a bachelor's degree saying so. I just don't really care about McEntyre's words. She didn't give me a reason to care.
Two, in that same vein of "not giving me a reason to care," I also felt like she was talking down to me the vast majority of the time. Maybe it's part of her effort to make professional writing widely accessible (which was one of the only points that I disagreed with to the point of closing the book), but it just felt like she was telling everyone that she knows what she's talking about and she wanted to talk about it at me instead of with me.
(Gripe two-point-five is that she spoke so adamantly against hyperbole and used hyperbole in the same breath. Not only am I for hyperbole because I feel like people are intelligent enough to tell the difference between exaggeration and fact but also because they are fun. I didn't appreciate that too much.)
I wouldn't really recommend this book to any of my friends if they were to ask. Incoming freshmen maybe, as they're the ones who really need to hear what McEntyre has to say, but I feel like her points are wasted on people who already care for words in a culture of lies.
The three stars come from the fact that I agree wholeheartedly with the ideas and concepts McEntyre is putting forward. Caring for Words has its priorities straight and in all the right places.
However, I have two main criticisms (or loud gripes, depending on if you've talked to me in person about this) of this book.
One, this book is geared 100% toward people who don't need to hear what it has to say. If you pick up Caring for Words, you already probably care about words. I was assigned to read it in a 400-level English class. I care about words enough to get a bachelor's degree saying so. I just don't really care about McEntyre's words. She didn't give me a reason to care.
Two, in that same vein of "not giving me a reason to care," I also felt like she was talking down to me the vast majority of the time. Maybe it's part of her effort to make professional writing widely accessible (which was one of the only points that I disagreed with to the point of closing the book), but it just felt like she was telling everyone that she knows what she's talking about and she wanted to talk about it at me instead of with me.
(Gripe two-point-five is that she spoke so adamantly against hyperbole and used hyperbole in the same breath. Not only am I for hyperbole because I feel like people are intelligent enough to tell the difference between exaggeration and fact but also because they are fun. I didn't appreciate that too much.)
I wouldn't really recommend this book to any of my friends if they were to ask. Incoming freshmen maybe, as they're the ones who really need to hear what McEntyre has to say, but I feel like her points are wasted on people who already care for words in a culture of lies.