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Adventures of the Comma Queen
by Mary Norris
Book Reviewed by:The Comma Queen returns with a buoyant book about language, love, and the wine-dark sea.
In her New York Times bestseller Between You & Me, Mary Norris delighted readers with her irreverent tales of pencils and punctuation in The New Yorker's celebrated copy department. In Greek to Me, she delivers another wise and funny paean to the art of self-expression, this time filtered through her greatest passion: all things Greek.
Greek to Me is a charming account of Norris's lifelong love affair with words and 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, goes searching for the fabled Baths of Aphrodite, and reveals the surprising ways Greek helped form English. Filled with Norris's memorable encounters with Greek words, Greek gods, Greek wine' - and more than a few Greek men' - Greek to Me is the Comma Queen's fresh take on Greece and the exotic yet strangely familiar language that so deeply influences our own.
A tribute to the written and spoken word, Greek To Me allows the reader the pleasure of meeting a writer who breaks all stereotypes for proofreaders, linguists and copy editors. Norris' sense of adventure and contagious love of learning for learning's sake shines through every page (Patricia E). What a fun book! It was like sitting down with a very down-to-earth chatty friend and comparing notes about all things classical - languages, literature and travel (Kathryn S)...continued
Full Review
(583 words)
(Reviewed by First Impressions Reviewers).
As Mary Norris notes in her travelogue/memoir/historical narrative Greek to Me, many words and terms in the English language are derived from Greek. These range from somewhat arcane medical and scientific terminology, to more commonly used words and phrases. The etymological evolutions are generally divided into three categories: learned borrowings, neologisms and vernacular words.
Learned borrowings came from the work of Medieval and Renaissance scholars studying Greek texts. These include words like "telescope" from the Greek τηλεσκόπος, meaning "far-seeing."
Medical, scientific and technical neologisms (new words created from Greek prefixes and suffixes) make up the great ...
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What a fantastic book! Not only is Greek to Me educational, entertaining, and gorgeously written, it shows us how intellectual curiosity coupled with a dash of bravery can pave the way for a more meaningful life. Mary Norris does for Greek and Greece what Cheryl Strayed did for hiking. Readers will long to follow in her footsteps.
