Yes, a novel set in Estonia can be riveting

I knew next to nothing about the Baltic states — Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia — when I began reading Purge on Saturday night.

By the time I finished the book — this morning over breakfast — I had developed, through the eyes of Aliide Truu, the protagonist, a sound understanding of the sufferings of Estonia and Estonians before World War II, during World War II, and after World War II, until the country became free again during the post-Gorbachev era.

SOFI OKSANEN

Of course, that's as far as history goes. Purge, though, offers much more than a history lesson — it gives readers a unique insight into human behaviour with a cast of characters ranging from an apparently sweet old "grandmother" to a young woman on the run from men who have forced her into sexual slavery.

Sofi Oksanen, the Finnish-Estonian author, won the European Book Prize for Purge, which she wrote in Finnish, in 2010. I am not surprised. It's time now for the English-speaking world to discover her.

• Read Sofi Oksanen's prize acceptance speech here.

• Read Maya Jaggi's review of Purge in the Guardian here.

• Author photo courtesy: Toni Härkönen/sofioksanen.com.

181 stories of how books got their titles

Ten minutes ago I received an e-mail from Commitscion Natasha Rego (Class of 2014), a co-editor of the college newspaper. She wrote that she happened to read my post on Ray Bradbury today, and after clicking on the links I had provided she realised that Bradbury is the author of Fahrenheit 451, the novel set in a dark future in which reading is illegal and firemen burn any house that contains books.

"I watched this movie a week ago," Natasha added, "and I was going to tell you about it sometime this week. I thought you would find it interesting to know that Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper burns (I think)."

A quick Google search led to a serendipitous discovery: There's an entire blog, published by journalist and writer Gary Dexter, that is devoted to the origins of book titles. How cool is that!

Looking up the appropriate post on "How Books Got Their Titles" led to another discovery: Bradbury might have got Celsius and Fahrenheit mixed up. I didn't know that. Check it out here: "Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury". (By the way, Slate magazine has also taken a stab at answering the question: "Does Paper Really Burn at 451 Degrees Fahrenheit?")

True, the post may not be conclusive as far as the temperature at which paper burns is concerned. But it's such fun for book-lovers to learn how some of the best-known books got their titles. Here's Dexter on the origins of Winnie-the-Pooh, for example. Want to know who Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse's immortal creation, was named after? Take a peek here.

In all, there are 181 stories of how books got their titles. The full list can be accessed here.

• Gary Dexter's book, Why Not Catch-21?: The Stories Behind the Titles, based on his long-running column in London's Sunday Telegraph, was published four years ago by the U.K.-based Frances Lincoln.

Here's how to make time to read

I have lost count of the number of times I have urged my students to develop a reading habit only to be told, "We don't have time to read."

I have written earlier about the importance of reading for young people, especially if they aspire to be media professionals: "A love of books is fundamental. Reading should be like breathing. Then the writing will follow. And it will flow. Unhesitatingly. Copiously. Gracefully. ("If you don't read, you can't write.")

But I am stumped, I have to confess, when I am confronted by a "no time for reading" retort. So I was deliriously happy when I came across an article titled "5 Ways to Make More Time to Read" (posted on November 11 last year). Robert Bruce, a full-time web writer who also happens to be on a quest to read all of Time magazine's 100 Greatest Novels, first explains how, in the last few years...

...I’ve dramatically changed my lifestyle. I’ve trained for five half marathons and two full marathons while working a full-time job. I’ve read 30 novels since last September. And, on top of all that, my wife and I had our first child last June. Kids have a slight effect on your schedule. Maybe you’ve heard?

And then he outlines the tips that helped him make more time to read:

1. Sacrifice something.
2. Make a routine.
3. Set a goal.
4. Have fun.
5. Mix it up.

Each of the points listed by Robert Bruce comes with its own sensible explanation and workable plan. Read the post in its entirety here. And browse through the more than 300 comments, too.

Now do you think you will have time to read?

• Also read: "101 Books: Reading my way through Time magazine's 100 greatest novels since 1923 (plus Ulysses)"

• And you must read "WHY YOU MUST READ".

How to avoid being a grammar goof

Of the many grammar books I have had the pleasure of reading (yes, pleasure; and no, Wren & Martin is not on the list), Woe Is I is right at the top.

This elegant, friendly, and witty bestseller, subtitled The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English, has taught me that learning never ends. More important, after reading up on author Patricia T. O'Conner's easy-to-understand explanations with easy-to-grasp examples, I now know...

1. None is not always singular.

None of Tyson's teeth were chipped is correct.

2. Both cactuses and cacti are correct.

O'Conner has this to say about other nouns of foreign origin:

How do you know whether to choose an Anglicised plural (like memorandums) or a foreign one (memoranda)? There's no single answer, unfortunately. A century ago, the foreign ending would have been preferred, but over the years we've given English plural endings to more and more foreign-derived words. And in common (rather than technical) usage, that trend is continuing. So don't assume that an exotic plural is more educated. Only ignorami would say they live in condominia.

What about the plural of octopus?

O'Conner writes:

Plurals can be singularly interesting. Take the octopus — a remarkable creature, grammatically as well as biologically. Octopus is from the Greek and means "eight-footed". The original plural was octopodes, Anglicised over the years to octopuses. Along the way, someone substituted the Latin ending pi for the Greek podes and came up with the polyglot octopi. Though it's etymologically illegitimate, octopi is now so common that dictionaries list it as a second choice after octopuses. I'll stick to octopuses, thank you very much. Octopi is for suckers.

Look at the punchline in each of O'Conner's paragraphs above. Aren't they knockouts?

3. One way to make a noun possessive is to add 's; another way is to put of in front of it. You can also use both.

O'Conner tells us both a friend of Jake's and a friend of Jake are correct. She says there's nothing wrong with using the 's in addition to of: Brett is an old girlfriend of Jake's [or of Jake]. The choice is ours.

4. How to use the possessive with -ing words that act as nouns.

He resents me going is wrong. It should be He resents my going. But if you thought the former is correct, O'Conner has a few words of consolation for you. Don't beat up on yourself, she says. You're a member of a large and distinguished club. She then gives us a helpful tip:

To see why so many of us slip up, let's look at two similar examples:

1. He resents my departure.

2. He resents me departure.

I'll bet you didn't have any trouble with that one. Obviously, number 1 is correct. Departure is a noun (a thing), and when it is modified by pronoun (a word that stands in for a noun), the pronoun has to be a possessive: my, his, her, your, and so on.

Now look again at the first set of examples:

1. He resents my going.

2. He resents me going.

If you still feel like picking number 2, it's because -ing words are chameleons. They come from verbs — go, in the case of going — and usually act like verbs. But every once in a while they step out of character and take on the role of nouns. For all intents and purposes they may as well be nouns; in this case, going may as well be the noun departure.

I absolutely love this no-fuss, no-nonsense approach to teaching grammar.

O'Conner gives us more on the subject of -ing words because how do we figure out whether an -ing word is acting like a verb or like a noun?

Here's a hint: If you can substitute a noun for the -ing word — departure in place of going, for example, or habit for smoking — then treat it like a noun. That means making the word in front a possessive (my, not me): He can't stand my smoking. 

5. How to decide whether a verb that goes with a phrase like one of the, one of those should be singular or plural. 

The answer in a nutshell.

If a that or a who comes before the verb, it's plural: He's one of the authors who say it best.

If not, it's singular: One of the authors says it best. 

And, again, an explanation that helps us to understand these rules:

In the first example, one is not the subject of the verb say. The actual subject is who, which is plural because it refers to authors. In the second example, the subject really is one. If you don't trust me, just turn the sentences around in your mind and you'll end up with the correct verbs: Of the authors who say it best, he is one. Of the authors, one says it best.

I have only provided five examples of what I've learnt from reading Woe Is I (read the author's preface to know the origin of the title). There is more, much more to digest and to appreciate and to feel good about. Get your own copy now and never again be a grammar goof.

• Also read: Patricia T. O'Conner's "20 questions you must ask yourself before you hit the 'Send' button".

• Also read: "The book you must read to rid your English of Indlish. In other words, read this book to learn to write plain English."

How PSY and "Gangnam Style" conquered the world

If the Economist, that most cerebral of magazines, sees fit to devote space to Korean pop music and the antics of superstar PSY, that surely means K-pop has arrived.

PSY (also known as Park Jae-sang), the Economist writes, is having the time of his life:

On August 12th at a stadium in Seoul, the rap star’s concert felt like the only party in town. He entertained 30,000 fans for almost four hours. And this veteran of the South Korean charts has suddenly become popular in the West, since the video for his song “Gangnam Style”, in which he rides an imaginary horse around a posh part of Seoul, went viral on YouTube. The track even hit number one on the iTunes dance chart in Finland.

"Gangnam Style" is getting a lot of play on Facebook these days. Want to know why? Check out the YouTube video:

And read up on why K-pop is turning into an export success: "South Korea’s music industry: Top of the K-pops"

One of my all-time favourite books...

...reviewed by my all-time favourite blogger (who is a self-described interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large): "How to Read Like a Writer".

• A copy of Reading Like a Writer has been placed in the Commits library. As youngsters like to say, Enjoy.

• Also read: "Who can say no to a weekly interestingness digest?" 

• And you must read "If you don't read, you can't write".

Is there no difference between "who's" and "whose"?

OCCASIONAL RANT NO. 9:

"Who's" and "whose" may sound alike (they are homophones), but surely literate people can tell the difference?

Here's the intro of an ANI story (pictured above) about Maria Sharapova:

Wellington, September 1 (ANI): Maria Sharapova, who's tennis has been going quite well at the moment, dropped a bit of off-court news at the US Open on Friday by announcing that she is no longer engaged to professional basketball player Sasha Vujacic.

Who's tennis?

This intro was used as is in DNA on Monday. Where are the subs when you need them?

Brain fog. Continuous partial attention. Who doesn't suffer from these two maladies nowadays?

In The Fall of the House of Forbes, author Stewart Pinkerton, while discussing Forbes's ambitious plans to go digital, refers to the work of an expert on the subject of what and how people read online, and we also get to understand what Web addiction can do to our brains.

We first learn that a Columbia University new media teacher, Anne Nelson, is not optimistic about the contributions of users to Websites or blogs by way of comments or editing assistance. It is foolish to expect engaging conversations, she implies, and backs up her assertions with statistics:

“Only about 0.02-0.03 per cent of English-language Wikipedia users, for instance, actually wind up actively contributing to the Website,” she says. For viewers of YouTube, she adds, “Only about 1 per cent comment.”

WHAT AND HOW PEOPLE READ ONLINE
Then, we get an insight into what and how people read online...

...Nelson cites the work of Danish Web consultant Jakob Nielsen, who has done studies of eye tracking of Web pages. Unlike print readers, whose eyes tend to zigzag across the page and scan most of the word, the eyes of people reading on backlit screens move in an F pattern: They first look at the top of the content, reading horizontally, usually not all the way across, then scan again lower down the page, but this time not reading as far, followed by a vertical scan to the bottom of the page. The result is that what’s on the middle and/or the right side of the page typically isn’t read at all.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN READING SOMETHING ONLINE AND IN PRINT
Nelson also shares with Pinkerton the results of a unique experiment she conducts with her students:

Each year in class, Nelson gives her students two long articles to read, often from The New Yorker — one online and one in print. Few students can really sum up what they’ve read online, if they can finish the piece at all. Those who read the print story did so to the end and had far higher retention and appreciation for what they’d experienced. “It’s the difference,” Nelson says, “between surfing fifty Websites and retaining very little the next day, and reading War and Peace and remembering characters and scenes ten years later.”

WEB ADDICTION
Pinkerton follows up with a brief digression into the nature of Web addiction, what’s productive and what isn’t:

Increasingly, studies at Columbia and elsewhere show that what UCLA psychiatrist Gary Small calls “brain fog”, a condition stemming from so much continuous partial attention that nothing is really ever absorbed — it never moves from the in-box to the file cabinet — is becoming more prevalent.
 
Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, writes that constant Web usage seemed to be changing “the very way my brain worked”. How? He was having trouble paying attention to one thing for more than a couple of minutes. My brain, he realised, “wasn’t just drifting. It was hungry. It was demanding to be fed the way the Net fed it — and the more it was fed, the hungrier it became.” The Internet, he sensed, “was turning me into something like a high-speed data-processing machine, a human HAL. I missed my old brain.”

Brain fog. Continuous partial attention (or CPA, which I have talked about often in my class). Who doesn't suffer from these two maladies nowadays?

• Also read (from The Fall of the House of Forbes): "A venerated editor, a rookie reporter, and the sparks that flew between them, leading to a brilliant expose of Avon".
  

• Also read (from The Fall of the House of Forbes): "Why amateur bloggers will never replace journalists".
  

Apologies, Economist-style

Only in the Economist, which was first published in 1843 to take part in "a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress", will you find even the apologies to be brilliantly written.

Here's one from the August 18th-24th, 2012, issue:

CORRECTION: An article on drinking at work ("The boredom of boozeless business", August 11th) claimed that journalists at Bloomberg Businessweek could be disciplined for sipping a spritzer at work. This is not true. Sorry. We must have been drunk on the job.

And here's another from the April 7th-13th, 2012, issue:

CORRECTION: In our piece on California water last week, we claimed that a softball is four times the diameter of a tennis ball. In fact, it is only 50% bigger. Time we got out of our armchairs.

• Also read: "Apologising to readers".

• Also read: "Corporate role models: Mother Teresa and (gasp!) Lady Gaga".

Why amateur bloggers will never replace journalists

Stewart Pinkerton, a former editor of Forbes magazine, in The Fall of the House of Forbes:

What's missing from raw footage streamed to the Web is an authoritative voice, the result of years of source cultivation, the building up of levels of trust that allow a reporter to put something in context. It's something that only established news outlets ... can do: flood the zone with reporters on a major story and report not just that there was a massacre of Congolese Tutsi in Burundi or a student riot in Paris, but also knowledgeably examine the economic and political reasons behind it. Most people need an expert to filter, prioritise, and context information. A fire hose of information without that is useless.

Yet now anyone can call himself a journalist.

"Hey, I can do that."

No, you can't.

My thoughts exactly.

• Also read: Stewart Pinkerton in The Fall of the House of Forbes on "A venerated editor, a rookie reporter, and the sparks that flew between them, leading to a brilliant expose of Avon".