Some Fun English Reading...

I was told about this book earlier last summer, but recently found it here in Korea and decided to give it a shot. "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" by Lynne Truss is a book about punctuation and grammatical correctness. WAIT! Before you stop reading this post, and this blog, I swear to you its a funny book. If you're going to come here and teach English you will surely develop a great sense of humor about the English language and subsequently feel bad for any that have to learn it.

It's a short book of about 200 pages that takes a look at how punctuation can change the meaning of any written statement/passage. It pokes fun at misplaced commas and apostrophes and does so with a sarcastic humor that you can't help but love.

It starts off with the joke about the Panda who comes into a restaurant, eats some food, takes out a gun and shoots two shots into the air, and walks out. As he walks out he throws a badly punctuated wildlife book at the waiter and says, "I'm a Panda, look it up." The waiter reads the book and sees, "Panda. Large black and white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots, and leaves."

Which, if you're good, you should know that the statement should read something like, "Panda. Large black and white bear like mammal. Native to China, eats shoots and leaves."

Regardless, I find this kind of stuff amusing and it is a pretty quick read. The book points out everyday misuses of punctuation that will make you realize that you don't even notice this stuff half the time, but maybe you should be more careful. I thoroughly recommend it.