view larger

Member: dgrapes

CollectionsYour library (2,088)

ReviewsNone

Tagsmilitary history (368), history (343), US (183), WW2 (181), architecture (149), fiction (138), gardens (129), Time-Life (114), art (114), philosophy (94) — see all tags

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud

GroupsMilitary History

About meThe library is a common interest of my wife and me: most of our reading interests are across the whole library with each concentrating in certain areas: me more military history, she more US social history; me more philosophy & classics, she more biography & modern fiction; me science & mathematics, she cooking & gardening, me railroads (ships, planes), she baseball (Brooklyn Dodgers) and both art, theater, architecture, music & Southwest US backpacking. Prized reference: 2005 Britannica (books only).

Addendum Jan 19, 2009: For some reason today I got side-tracked in cataloging and started to read reviews of Strunk's "Elements of Style". As one reviewer noted there are apt to be two extremes: "Elements" is the Bible for writing well and the other, it is too rule-bound and, hence, crimps the stylistic individual. As several noted, "Elements" is intended for us regular folks, needing to write clearly and well; those with that extra ability need not be rule-bound or guided by authority.

But those who criticize need to be able to know the rules, how to apply them, and when to break them: one reviewer declares it "[a]n unfortunate book. It assumes that writing style is reducible to a set of rules. . . . A reasonable guide for basic English, but it's use has suppressed far to much individuality." And in this last sentence are two basic grammatical errors! Methinks, you, dear reviewer, are hoisted upon your own petard and need to take a long re-read of "Elements" and think about rules and usage.

Maybe Hemmingway, maybe Steinbeck, Golding and Coetzee can ignore the rules, but I don't think they ignore "it's" versus "its" or "to" versus "too".

April 2 update: "Who's (...oops!)Whose Grammar Book Is This Anyway?" C. Edward Good. Barnes & Noble, 2002. Excellent for all the details & nuances of grammatically correct writing: however, I prefer/follow the English (UK)stylistic usage of quotation marks, which makes more logical sense to me than the American standard practice.

May 16, 2009 update: I recently served on a panel judging essays for a scholarship (high school seniors), the topic being list ten favorite books, choose one and tell why it was chosen and with whom you would share it. All the writers had letters of recommendation from a teacher and were in AP-type literature & writing classes: they all should be re-taught from Strunk & White - grammar, spelling, word usage, etc. were far below my expectations given the glowing recommendations and the supposed AP quality work done. The essays were filled with trite, tired phrases, cliches, wordiness and blather. Not having kids myself, I've paid my taxes, but have not gotten my monies' worth, and this is a premier school district (95% go to college, and the big names, too!).

June 18, 2009 update: My cataloging has now reached "music"; I have no training (my wife played violin in school), but love classical (the string quartet being the most sublime form - The Juilliard is the best; I hated to see The Vermeer disband) and opera (Sam Ramey is the best). We were just at an open rehearsal of the CSO: I still see Sir George Solti up on the podium. Jazz is great: Chet Baker rules the trumpet. We stopped supporting WBEZ-FM when it went from a major jazz radio station to 90% talking idiots and switched our loyalty to WDCB (College of Central DuPage), which is jazz and Chuck Schaden's old time radio programs.

About my libraryHistory (Greek, Roman, US, European), Military History (Greek, Roman, Crusades, US West & Indian Wars, US Civil War, WW 2/Memoirs, Korean War/Memoirs), Western Philosophy, Science (Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy/Cosmology, Consciousness/Cognition/AI, Darwinism/Evolution), US Travel (Southwest, Backpacking in SW), Atlases & Maps (Historical/Geographical/SW Hiking & Backpacking), Dictionaries (English, DARE, Other Regional American, Latin & Latin hornbooks, French, German, Italian, Yiddish), Biography, Literature (Fiction, Drama, Poetry, Criticism, The Western Canon), Art (European & American), Architecture (History, Design, Architects/Wright), Gardening (Gardens, Horticulture), Baseball, Mystery, Cook Books, Bridge: 290 lineal feet of book shelves and growing: May 2009 - 312 feet: coffee table books are holding up the coffee table!.

Wtih few exceptions, all the posted book covers are for editions in our library - either retrieved from librarything or scanned and uploaded. Occasionally a frontispiece, title page or book illustration is used as the cover. Also included are a number of phamphlet-type publications or magazine issues germane to our reading interests, e.g. art or history.

Addendum Nov 30 2008: I am finding that my tag cloud is too much; once all my books are cataloged, I'm going to have to address that issue; I hope the mass edit function will help get the tags to be more manageable, logical, and coherent.

Real nameDelmon (Del) Grapes

LocationLake Bluff Illinois

Emaildbg350sbcglobal.net

Favorite authorsNone

Account typepublic, lifetime

Connection NewsConnection News

URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/dgrapes (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/dgrapes (library)

Common KnowledgeSeries (154), Awards (159), Characters (1616), Places (472)

Member sinceMar 10, 2008