Holiday 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 that time of year when we give our annual book recommendations.

Grant, what you got?

I’ve got one book to recommend this year. I feel a little like I should come with an army of books to recommend. Certainly there’s a lot going on in our house book-wise. But this one book I wanted to share with you because my son really loves it, and so I’m kind of passing along his recommendation.

The book is called Valley Cats. It’s by Gretchen Preston with illustrations by Karen Newman. And so the book is about Boonie and River, who are two cats who kind of live in a kind of almost country environment where there are humans who have lives and cats who have lives. And we hear the voices of the cats and the voices of the humans. And it’s about their relationships and the adventures they get up to.

And inside covers of the books are maps. This is one of the things he particularly loves about the book. My son really likes the fact that when they go to a place near the river, he can see the river or the treehouse. He can see the treehouse and then kind of place them in their environment.

It’s a long book. It’s a thick book. It’s a chapter book. Big illustrations on some page. But it’s something that you need a steady reader to do or a parent needs to read it to the child. Like your child can’t really be a newbie. So we read this at bedtime a couple chapters at a go. And I think the reason my son loves this book, Valley Cat, is that he’s really kind of getting into the lives of these kittens or these cats.

So Boonie and River, they’re kind of like us but a little different. Some of their concerns are cat concerns and not really human concerns. And he’s kind of seeing through the cat’s eyes how our cats might perceive us and think of us. So there’s a scene where a cat befriends a blind man who moves into the neighborhood. And we understand that the cat decides that he’s going to adopt this person and climbs up on his lap and becomes his buddy.

And my son was just kind of taken with this idea that the cats have will, an initiative. And he never really quite thought about that, of these beings as being something other than cute little things there for his enjoyment, that they have their own internal lives. That’s very cool. That’s what fiction does, right, is get us outside of ourselves.

So that book is Valley Cats by Gretchen Preston with illustrations by Karen Newman. And I should say we haven’t read them yet, but there are two more books in the series, More Valley Cats. And the next one, Valley Cats, The Adventures of Booney and River, was just released.

Very cool. Well, Grant, I have a book that I’m really excited about, and I know you’re going to love it. Now, picture this. You and I are both admirers of Brian Garner, author of Modern American Usage, right? And we’re also fans of David Foster Wallace.

Yes, yes we are. Who died, unfortunately, in 2008. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could get the two of them together for a casual conversation about language and the craft of writing and that kind of thing? Wouldn’t it be cool?

Yes, and you have something for me? I have something for you because this happened. It’s so cool. They were friends, the two of them. And in 2006, they videotaped a casual conversation together at a hotel in Los Angeles.

So it turns out that there’s this marvelous conversation between the two of them that he has transcribed and published as a book called Quack This Way. David Foster Wallace and Brian A. Garner talk about language and writing. And Grant, it’s short. You can read it in one evening, but it is a gem.

It’s just this gorgeous book of these two guys sitting around talking shop, and we get to eavesdrop on it. Sounds fantastic. Two very intelligent men coming from different ends of the writing spectrum, but meeting in the middle to see where they overlap and to see where they differ.

This isn’t their carefully crafted prose. This is them chewing on ideas and kicking them back and forth. And David Foster Wallace comes across as so passionate and precise and also kind of self-effacing. There are a lot of times in the transcript where he says, I know you’re going to cut this, but blah, blah, blah. And, of course, that’s some of the best stuff, right?

They talk about airline jargon. They talk about when you might want to use the passive voice. I mean, all this kind of stuff that we talk about on the show, it’s just really a thrilling read. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

And the book again? Quack This Way. Isn’t that great? That’s fantastic. We’ll put links to these book recommendations on our website. And you know, we’re always interested in the books that you’re reading that you think we should share with the rest of the audience. Let us know, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.