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Marge V. (Merriam, KS)
Not Greek To Me
I really enjoyed this book! Ms. Norris has written to a niche audience I think but I am one of the ones she's written this for. I am a lover of words, their origins, and their roots. I also am a devotee of history and travel (although I am glad to get home). I used to be an editor and am still a writer albeit for my own descendants. Still, to learn about myth and history and to expand your world, read this interesting tome.
Teresa R. (Surprise, AZ)
Not just for Word Nerds
Mary Norris' first book, Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen, provided a lively account of her (now 40-year) career as a copy editor at New Yorker magazine. Along the way she also furnished an entertaining and educational narrative on the topics of grammar and punctuation.
Ms. Norris' new book chronicles her challenges in achieving (semi-)fluency in Greek, which she studied diligently by day while copy editing through the graveyard shift at the New Yorker to pay her bills. The book is also a paean to the richness of the Greek contribution to Western Civilization as well as a travelogue documenting her visits to multiple locales cited in Greek mythology. Here and there she alludes to elements of that mythology poignantly reflected in incidents from her personal life (see Tragedy). If you neglected to take "Greek Civ 101" back in the day, this erudite but wryly entertaining book will nicely fill that gap.
Cloggie Downunder
Informative and entertaining.
“Why do we lean on dead languages for new things? Perhaps expressing these things in the language that is oldest, in words that we have in common with many other languages, gives us a touchstone.”
Greek To Me: adventures of the Comma Queen is a memoir by self-admitted philhellene and best-selling American author, Mary Norris. She has been on the staff of The New Yorker for some 35 years, and a Page OK’er for twenty of those. Norris has been referred to by some as a prose goddess, or a comma queen. She begins by declaring her fascination with all things Greek, and explaining how and why she came to study ancient Greek under the aegis of The New Yorker.
She explains how the Greek alphabet derives from the Phoenician, and many other alphabets from Greek; why Athena is a good model for a copy editor; and she declares her respect for those authors of definitive works on Greek and Greece.
This is a memoir that isn’t bound by chronology but is filled with Norris’s love for Greek, and her experiences with Greek and in Greece. Norris takes us on her somewhat comic pilgrimage to Elefsina in search of the Eleusinian Mysteries; she details her short stage career in Greek tragedies, one that had her recalling her family’s own tragedy and drawing on experiences of her own and those close to her; she describes days copy editing, nights immersed in Greek; skinny-dipping in Aphrodite’s Bathing place in Crete; visits to, and exploration of, the Acropolis.
The echoes and connections in the English language that Norris makes with ancient Greek are sometimes obvious, sometimes personal and quite tenuous: when she explains it, an anthology is a word bouquet; Dipsás? (Are you thirsty?) has an obvious connection with dipsomaniac.
Norris notes today’s reverse trends: audio books taking us back to the oral tradition; reading on devices requiring scrolling so many thousands of years after scrolls were abandoned for books; and texting language that omits vowels, just as the Phoenician alphabet did.
On alphabets, she tells us: “A ‘character’ is a symbol for recording language… the word comes from the ancient Greek charásso, meaning ‘to make sharp, cut into furrows, engrave.’ The leap from a symbol graved in stone to a person endowed with a sharply defined personality is a good example of the way a word ripples out into metaphor.”
For the unenlightened, there is much to be learned from this memoir: where the terms uppercase and lowercase come from; that omicron literally means small O and Omega, big O; how the direction of text originated; the absence of spacing; the irony that the modern Greek word for eucalyptus derives from ancient Greek, but via English, as the English botanists who named it in Australia in 1788 did so from ancient Greek.
The etymology is often interesting: “If surgeons knew that the word surgery comes from the ancient Greek cheirougia (hand work) meaning ‘handiwork’, and could apply as well to needlepoint as to brain surgery, they might not be so arrogant.” Informative and entertaining.
Carol T
And ode to language lovers
I've always loved Mary Norris' writing. She makes all things understandable. Nearly a 5 star, but I wasn't as enamored of all the travels as I was of the language sections.
Alice R. (Wilmore, KY)
Language Guru
I liked reading this book for a few reasons. I have a Ph.D. and teach in education. I was actually drawn to this by the authors passion for the subject. I can relate to having a passion for something and making it my mission that everyone else join my train :) I think this book would appeal to anyone who loves languages and history!
Kathryn_S
Greek To Me
What a fun book! It was like sitting down with a very down-to-earth chatty friend and comparing notes about things classical - languages, literature and travel. It helps to have at least a smattering knowledge of Greek (and Roman) mythology, mythology,classical languages (Latin and Greek) and geography, especially if acquired first hand through travel in Greece. Throw in a dash of New Yorker copy-editor asides, and you have a recipe for an entertaining evening's read.
Courtney_Nogar
A fun exploration of language AND culture
I started reading this book thinking that it would be a language geek out from beginning to end and honestly looking forward to that. However, just as I was starting to get my fill of the language geekiness, the book took a turn and went into so much Greek culture and fun adventures taken by the author. I was charmed. I loved travelling with her as an outsider who realized that she would never fully understand life in this foreign land but loves it anyways.
Elizabeth S. (East Hartford, CT)
Greek Love Affair
Retired New Yorker copy editor Mary Morris shares her lifelong love of Greece with a combined memoir, history, travel guide to all things Greek. Along the way the reader learns much from her witty style. Best suited to someone already familiar with a little Greek culture, the book highlights the difficulty of learning both ancient and modern Greek, the travails of traveling as a single woman, and the deep influence of Greek on English. Her self deprecating humor and refusal to take things too seriously adds to the enjoyment.
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