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alexblackreads 's review for:
informative
slow-paced
I picked this up for a fun little book on grammar to listen to while driving because I'm a nerd. For a while it delivered. It's really basic and Clark has such generic dad humor, but that was kind of a good vibe for the first half of the book. But the second half was grating. I just stopped having fun and it felt long. I struggled to keep focus.
He has a chapter on singular they and pronouns as they relate to transgender people. Which I do really appreciate his attempt to be inclusive. He was for sure trying to be inclusive and came down very much in favor of the singular they. But there were a lot of problems in that chapter. He winds up disagreeing with every option offered by transgender people in terms of their pronouns without any good reason. They just don't work for him, apparently. And he shared a passage written about a transwoman in which she was misgendered the entire time (not once in that passage was she correctly gendered) and Clark proceeded to deadname her. Perhaps it was just because this book was written in 2010 and we've come along way since, but it was very difficult to get through.
He also talked about articles who outed Johnny Weir as gay and said he disagreed that it was a bad thing (which I don't fully remember the context since I was pretty young at the time, but outing anyone without their consent is bad). Then he shared another article about Johnny Weir as an example of "show don't tell" which basically coded him as gay without explicitly saying. Which is gross. You're not a gay man just because you like shopping. Like maybe I misunderstood his intent, but he would share passages in each chapter as examples of the grammar he was discussing, and proceeded to talk about "show don't tell" immediately after the Johnny Weir passage.
Again, it was 2010 so maybe he was just trying his best and falling short. Hopefully he's come a good ways since writing this.
It wasn't terrible, just kind of basic. I wish I'd had fun throughout, but it just fell short. Not a terrible option if you're looking to brush up on the basics, but I feel like there are probably better options.
He has a chapter on singular they and pronouns as they relate to transgender people. Which I do really appreciate his attempt to be inclusive. He was for sure trying to be inclusive and came down very much in favor of the singular they. But there were a lot of problems in that chapter. He winds up disagreeing with every option offered by transgender people in terms of their pronouns without any good reason. They just don't work for him, apparently. And he shared a passage written about a transwoman in which she was misgendered the entire time (not once in that passage was she correctly gendered) and Clark proceeded to deadname her. Perhaps it was just because this book was written in 2010 and we've come along way since, but it was very difficult to get through.
He also talked about articles who outed Johnny Weir as gay and said he disagreed that it was a bad thing (which I don't fully remember the context since I was pretty young at the time, but outing anyone without their consent is bad). Then he shared another article about Johnny Weir as an example of "show don't tell" which basically coded him as gay without explicitly saying. Which is gross. You're not a gay man just because you like shopping. Like maybe I misunderstood his intent, but he would share passages in each chapter as examples of the grammar he was discussing, and proceeded to talk about "show don't tell" immediately after the Johnny Weir passage.
Again, it was 2010 so maybe he was just trying his best and falling short. Hopefully he's come a good ways since writing this.
It wasn't terrible, just kind of basic. I wish I'd had fun throughout, but it just fell short. Not a terrible option if you're looking to brush up on the basics, but I feel like there are probably better options.