Grant and Martha’s Yearly Book Recommendations

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And it’s time for our annual list of book recommendations.

These are books that I’m going to be giving to people probably for years to come.

One of them is Letters of Note. We’ve talked about that before. That’s this gorgeous collection of 125 of the world’s most entertaining, inspiring, and unusual letters. Everything from Virginia Woolf’s suicide letter to Leonardo da Vinci’s job application that he once wrote to somebody. I love that book and will continue to recommend that.

I co-sign.

You sign off on that one?

Yeah.

And, of course, Steven Pinker’s book, The Sense of Style, The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. I think you’re with me on that one.

Co-sign that one as well. Gorgeous, gorgeous book about how to write well in English.

And one more that I’ve been enjoying lately is by David Crystal. It’s called Wordsmiths and Warriors, The English Language Tourist’s Guide to Britain. What David Crystal does in this book is he takes 57 places in Britain that somehow have significance to the English language, whether it’s where the Vikings first landed on the shores or Canterbury, the destination of Chaucer’s characters, or Oxford, where James Murray and the team created the Oxford English Dictionary. He actually went on a tour with his wife all around England to all of these places.

And if you’re an Anglophile or you’re planning a trip to England, or if you just want to have a vicarious trip in your armchair, it’s a terrific introduction to England via places that are significant to the English language.

And that book again is?

It’s called Wordsmiths and Warriors, The English Language Tourist’s Guide to Britain.

I’ve got two books to recommend as well. It’s become a tradition that I will recommend children’s books because I have a child and we spend a great deal of time in the library. The two books I want to mention this time are kind of very different from each other, but they’re both Newbery Award winners, it turns out.

One you’ve probably heard of from The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweather.

Yes, I read that in sixth grade. It was published in 1967. This book is about two young kids who run away and they go to stay at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

And for children to read this book and put themselves in the shoes of this boy and this girl who do this unthinkable act.

And they have a great deal of fun.

And it’s laden with learning.

And it’s got a lot of different textures on how they relate to each other, how they relate to their families, the adults around them.

And actually, the Met doesn’t feel that different in 1967 in the book than it would today.

A lot of it is still there.

Yeah, yeah.

I loved that book.

It was exploring someplace forbidden.

I remember that very well.

So that’s from The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsberg.

The other book I have to mention is called The One and Only Ivan by Catherine Applegate.

This is a, how should I put this, a little more moody of a book.

This is about a gorilla who lives in a shopping mall zoo that’s very run down and doesn’t have a lot of animals.

And the guy who owns it isn’t very nice.

And the crux of the story, if I can tell you without giving it away, is that Ivan turns out to be remarkable because he saves the future of a young elephant.

And in his incredible act, by pure force of will, he does amazing things to get her in a place where she needs to be and have a full, well-rounded life as an elephant.

And so it’s a little dark in places and a little moody.

And my family read this book, and it’s very different than the comic hijinks that we like in many other books.

But yet, if you’ve got this heart for animals, if you’ve got a heart for stories of saving anybody, of somebody sacrificing themselves to rescue someone else, this is that book.

And it’s beautiful, very well written, almost poetry in places.

And I just want to read you one tiny part.

This is how the book starts.

Hello.

I am Ivan.

I am a gorilla.

It’s not as easy as it looks.

And so there’s a little bit of that throughout.

So there’s a dog and some other animals.

So this is The One and Only Ivan by Catherine Applegate.

It’s not as easy as it looks.

That’s terrific.

We’ll post links to these books on our website.

And, you know, we’re always interested in the books that you’re reading that you recommend to us.

And we often get those and we’re willing to share them with others.

So send your book recommendations to words@waywordradio.org or give us a call 877-929-9673.