Ben YagodaRecensioni

There's some absolutely great stuff in here. Particularly interesting is the great battle between ASCAP (the old guard) and BMI. It's hard to believe how reactionary these guys were. Rather ironic that you could write a song like "I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues" and then complain about "Hound Dog" and "Yakety Yak." You'd think that, even if the composers had a problem with all the three chord songs, the lyricists would at least grasp the wit of some of these tunes. Anyway, the book is mostly successful, but the last chapter, which tries to wrap up all the great songwriters since Bacharach certainly fails--not only because it's an impossibly large task, but because it fails to get at one of the most important features of songwriting since the tin Pan Alley days: that you don't have to write love songs, novelty songs, or songs for the plot of some Broadway or Hollywood production. You can write "It's Alright, Ma," or "Lucifer Sam" or "Venus In Furs" or "A Day in the Life" or "Cabinessence."

There's some absolutely great stuff in here. Particularly interesting is the great battle between ASCAP (the old guard) and BMI. It's hard to believe how reactionary these guys were. Rather ironic that you could write a song like "I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues" and then complain about "Hound Dog" and "Yakety Yak." You'd think that, even if the composers had a problem with all the three chord songs, the lyricists would at least grasp the wit of some of these tunes. Anyway, the book is mostly successful, but the last chapter, which tries to wrap up all the great songwriters since Bacharach certainly fails--not only because it's an impossibly large task, but because it fails to get at one of the most important features of songwriting since the tin Pan Alley days: that you don't have to write love songs, novelty songs, or songs for the plot of some Broadway or Hollywood production. You can write "It's Alright, Ma," or "Lucifer Sam" or "Venus In Furs" or "A Day in the Life" or "Cabinessence."

Books about writing offer varied advice and often contradict themselves. Should everyone write like Hemingway? Is it ok to diverge from Strunk and White’s style? How can I inject personality into writing without putting off my audience (or my editor)? These are common issues for writers, especially new or aspiring ones, and Ben Yagoda has decided to address them. He has interviewed and compiled results on acclaimed writers from many fields, genres, and styles. He presents his findings and garnered insights in this book.

He divides his investigation into two parts: history and practice. The historical facet is interesting because it captures how style changes over time. Without a grasp of the past, it’s hard to figure out why we got here and how to move forward. At times, this section can involve a lot of names that I’m frankly unfamiliar with, but Yagoda offers erudite insights about topics like how speech and writing mingle or how modern writing should marry the heart and the head.

The section on practice is filled with transcripts of interviews from great authors. Yagoda himself is not the main driving force here as much as the questioner. The variety of writers this second-half deep and wide. Its meatiest chapter is about forms and genres; in 58 pages, that chapter looks at an interview with one-or-more expert in each writing form – personal essays, stories, poetry, online, etc. – and discusses how that person gained a remarkable style.

This book seems most suited towards writers in an educational degree program, but newer writers on their own can benefit from the self-discipline of reading Yagoda’s words. He concludes by noting that the cultivation of a writing style occurs throughout an entire life. It accompanies the building of inner strength and is most enhanced through reading, not practice. Thus, even experienced writers (and middle-aged fogeys like myself!) can benefit from his studied expertise. My authorship will benefit from the rich tapestry of quotations noted here.

An interesting examination of parts of speech - not just adjective, as the title says. My favorites sections are about adjectives, adverbs, and conjunctions. The book is full of anecdotes and real-world examples. At times, Yagoda sounds pedantic and certain chapters, especially, pronouns and prepositions are boring. Those monolithic paragraphs (oxymoron) didn't help the cause.

Real gem! Advice to live by

Mostly not bad.

Made me distrustful of memoir as history, and made me want to read more memoir as literature.

For anyone who loves the English language or good writing or both this is a brief but essential book. With wry humor the author skewers the abusers of English while providing an important message for those who are able to calm down after each fit of laughter.

In some ways this seems like a high-brow version of Richard Armour, but just not too high. The book covers parts of speech from Adj. to V. and seven others in between. With quips like this - "Every word, when a grammarian knows not what to make of it, he calls an adverb." - from the Roman Servius. Or there are examples of words that go rogue like prepositions that end up being adverbs or phrasal verbs. For what it's worth I enjoyed the ride and survived to, hopefully, use adjectives and other words with a bit more circumspection than I may have in the past.

Oddly enough, I've never been a reader of The New Yorker. I've been aware of the magazine since my teens and have read references to it quite often, but I've never sat down and actually read through a single issue. So it was surprising that I enjoyed this book so much--or maybe not surprising. Even in my teens, I read James Thurber's books with glee. I've loved E.B. White since my third-grade teacher read Charlotte's Web to our class. I am familiar with the writers and cartoonists of The New Yorker the way I am familiar with classical music. It has always been in the background of my life and I've heard it, but often haven't paid attention to it.

Yagoda gained access to the archives of The New Yorker when they were donated to the New York Public Library. He recognized a good story when he saw it. He covers the events of the magazine from its beginnings with the legendary editor Harold Ross until the late 1990s. He goes into fascinating descriptions of the people involved in the magazine and how their personalities and quirks shaped it. To me, the book was as engrossing as a good novel. For decades, I've looked at many of its writers as mythical figures. It was humbling and somehow heartening to find that they were human after all.

Now I need to find his book on Will Rogers.

The Art of Fact lives up to its billing as literary journalism;
unfortunately, it is also pretty depressing.

Not that the reporting isn't often impressive; it's the selection of content that can weigh readers down,
getting us off to a rip roaring start with a hanging and moving into Dickens totally without redemption...

it would have been welcome if Whitman had led off the collection. It's one to end wars forever.

"Bronx Slave market" was brutally honest.

"Armies of the Night" offered Mailer's self-absorbed and humorless tedium.

It works as an uneven collection from the opening horror and onto more boring tedium (Tom Wolfe) and into brilliant (John McPhee).

"Juke Joint" was the most readable and Hershey's HIROSHIMA the most powerful.

Wars and violence and more cruelty than can be imagined -
is this the best that humans can come up with after climbing down the trees and crossing the savannas?

It was also surprising not to see Mary McGrory's evocative JFK writing
alongside Jimmy Breslin's lighter "It's an Honor."

An excellent reincarnation of Strunk and White. Anyone who attempts to teach writing, in any subject, should assign this book. Like The Elements of Style, How to Not Write Bad begins with a general essay on the importance of clarity and brevity and then moves into more specific advice. Yagoda's examples of weak writing are perfectly chosen. Reading this will make you even more self-conscious of what your write, as I was when I began this review with a fragment. Yagoda's goal is not to inspire budding geniuses or brownbeat the reader into memorizing rules; instead, his assumption (reflected in his title) is that writing "not bad" is a challenge--nevermind writing like Orwell. The book reminded me of a sign I once saw in a classroom: "Don't try to be different. Just try to be good. Being good is different enough." Writing "not bad" is different enough, too. Recommended.

Not bad for an American...I found this book interesting. I learnt a few things, I had a bit of a giggle, and at times I wanted to throw my ereader out of the window. Read if you enjoy English.

Twenty years ago my archeology professor informed me to always keep my subject with my verb. This book gave me flashbacks. I read this book as a refresher because I had a feeling my writing style had become lazy. I needed to go back to basics. "How to Not Write Bad" is an excellent overview of general errors with good examples and easily understood fixes. This book provides a firm base upon which a writer can build their own style and hopefully hold attention. Anyone who writes for a living, whether it's a report for your boss or an article for the local newspaper should read this book, or even if you just want to improve your written word.

I almost liked this one, but not quite. The premise is a good one: teaching people to avoid the worst mistakes in their writing and produce competent prose that will serve most purposes. However, the tone felt harsh at times, especially in characterizing the students who produced some of the examples of bad writing, and I couldn't agree with the author's stance against logical punctuation (putting commas and periods outside quotation marks when they are not part of the material being quoted) and the use of "they" as a singular pronoun. I'd rather people use "they" than clunk around with "he/she" all the time. It's how people talk and will be understood. (If I think the audience of the document will object to this use of "they", I will recast the sentence to make the subject plural. Take that!)

This may be a better book to read if you haven't read too many books about writing -- I've read a lot of them and didn't get much new out of this one (except for the interesting tidbit about opening single quotes vs apostrophes).½

The author Ben Yagoda, looks at what are the particulars of the Great American Songbook.
What is it that makes it so melodious, harmonic and poetic? Why was there a special black magic in those years - specifically between 1925s & 1950s- during which so many composers and lyricists produced relaxed, easy going and yet complex songs?
Between New-York's Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood, he looks at the centers of production of timeless music though remaining products of their historical time.
How come this great American songbook has so few equivalents? There are great Russian, French, Italian, Peruvian, Korean, South African songbooks, yet none has had so much influence and continues to have, than the Great American Songbook.

From the secularization of Christmas by Mr. Berlin's forever white and snowy lyrical evocative of the Holidays season to the financials of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" by Mr. Marks, Yagoda writes about music production, radio stations, recording studios, lyrics and artists that give new interpretations of the songs of this songbook, years after years, come rock and roll or the British Invasion, come rain or come shine, with great depth and width of knowledge.

This 'wonderful 'smarvelous book is for all of you who enjoy Broadway musicals and the old standards. Just look at that amazing picture of Sinatra on the cover! Ben Yagoda pays homage to songwriters and lyricists from Irving Berlin to the bards of my generation (Lennon/McCartney, Leonard Cohen, Dylan, Joni Mitchell). The emphasis is on Tin Pan Alley and the Brill Building years, and how music grew and changed from playing piano at home to concerts and juke joints to radio and records.

All the favorites - Gershwins, Cole Porter and Nat King, Yip Harburg, Rogers and Hammerstein, Burt Bacharach - are here, with the emphasis on the founding of ASCAP (hello, John Phillips Sousa!)and BMI and on how song pushers turned into song writers, how Hollywood and Broadway influences waxed and waned. The ethnicity (primarily Jewish songwriters and lyricists and primarily black singers to put those songs across) emphasis is also covered in a most thorough yet playful style.

This is such an entertaining read, especially for those who know of nothing before Andrew Lloyd Webber (who thankfully doesn't get an mention!).½

This is a lot more entertaining than a book on parts of speech ought to be. Yagoda includes enough pop-culture references (many are from The Simpsons), literary quips, and bad jokes (including the best Tom Swiftie of all time: "'I manufacture tabletops for shops,' Tom said counterproductively") to keep the material from being dry and dull. He manages to point out sins of amateur writing (over-reliance on adjectives and adverbs, for starters) that some readers (myself included... gulp) will recognize in themselves, without being a jerk about it. He's friendly and accessible, conversational even. I think I may have had some conversations on these topics, so I'm more "primed" for this than most people I know.

(I'll probably be adding this to the Potential Summer Reading for High Schoolers list I'm compiling.)

Fascinating book of one of the few magazines that's still around from my childhood. Yagoda did a great deal of research and certainly captures the magazine at least during the 20th century. It is a bit dated now, but the history of how a magazine succeeded by publishing such earth-shaking features as Hiroshima and Silent Spring, and sponsored Thurber and White is inspiring. A must for anyone interested in the intellectual life of the U.S. in the 20th century or in the history of media.

I went from one Ben Yagoda book to another...this one is all about literary voice. What is it? Can it be learned? Can it be taught? The answers to all these questions are inconclusive, of course, but Yagoda has a fine time talking shop with a bunch of fine writers and coming to some qualified conclusions. (If you had to boil his conclusion down to one sentence, it would be "The style is the man.") This is one of those books writers read when they don't feel like writing. (Not that there's anything WRONG with that...)

Yep, here it is: a biography of the biography. Ben Yagoda traces trends in self-telling from Caesar to Rousseau to Valerie Bertinelli. Interesting questions abound: is it possible to tell the truth about oneself? Should anyone be so egotistical as to make the attempt? Our age is obsessed with memoir -- why? Yagoda does an unfussy job covering the subject. Though short on surprises and inevitably incomplete, this book is a worthy survey.

Wonderful history of my favourite magazine. Equal parts history and anecdotes, with a real feel for what The New Yorker is, and what it represents.

I love this book. Yagoda says he was literally the first person in line to see the recently opened New Yorker archives, so he had access to information that no one before him was able to use. This is the biography of a magazine: it's comprehensive and it's a huge read. Yagoda laces the book with lots of quotations, anecdotes, and photos.

Book on language that reads with a begining middle then end. Very readable and enjoyable.

Not many writers can tackle the sometimes tedious subject of the parts of speech. Ben Yagoda's fascination with the English language is clear, and I couldn't help but take part in his excitement, joy, and occasional irritation that is involved in defining and determining proper usage of the parts of speech.

Each chapter takes a stab at the sometimes shady definitions of the parts of speech. Quotes and anecdotes from famous editors, writers, and pop culture icons bring the language to life. ...more Not many writers can tackle the sometimes tedious subject of the parts of speech. Ben Yagoda's fascination with the English language is clear, and I couldn't help but take part in his excitement, joy, and occasional irritation that is involved in defining and determining proper usage of the parts of speech.

Each chapter takes a stab at the sometimes shady definitions of the parts of speech. Quotes and anecdotes from famous editors, writers, and pop culture icons bring the language to life.

Yagoda comes to the defense of those parts of speech and grammatical uses that having been getting a bad wrap over the years, such as adverbs, adjectives, and more. He reveals the source of the almost superstitious hatred against such uses, explains why the hatred is unfounded, and offers examples from famous and well-loved authors who have broken the 'rules' and used this kind of language to powerful effect.

As I read, I found myself paying extra attention the Yagoda's use of words, his own sentences in describing the language illuminating in. As the he predicted I will be forevermore shifting 'only' back and forth. This is an excellent book for any english language aficionado.