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Monday, May 23, 2011

Great Tag Sale Book Titles: Aim Low!

Shopping for essentials at tag sales used to be a great way to save money, but it, too, has become expensive. As part of the new economy for the 21st century, I have decided to start a new trend by photographing the things I want to buy. Hey, it's just like owning it! It's what I call a "virtual possession" or  "E-Ownership."  I can enjoy all it's aesthetic beauty and utility and store it on my E-shelf where it only takes up a few hundred kilobytes. In those terms I now own this copy of Writing Good English.  "Bah!" you say, "You can't open it and read it, so you don't really own it!"  On the contrary, Sir, what about the your copy of Moby Dick on the kindle, in the cloud?  Have you ever opened that?  "Well, no, but I plan to...er, someday."  Ah Ha!  "Same thing." I reply.

Actually, I whipped out my camera at an Estate sale this weekend because the contradiction of the title immediately struck me as funny. I constantly need to check my command of the English language because I write what I think, and while that may sound good in my head, it doesn't always work out that way.  You can ponder the correctness of the title, I searched for an online grammar check, who could only tell me that the adverb "well" should be used with "Writing."  Their solution was to correct it to Writing Well English.  My suggestion for the correct title probably wouldn't fly either: Writing English Well.  Rather than promising readers a mediocre goal for their language skills, the author should have kept it simple and offered Writing Correct English
You know what? I'm already tired of my E-ownership of this book. I think I'll just E-rase it.

3 comments:

  1. Rather than E-rase it Greg, perhaps you could re-sell it on Ebay. Have we gotten to the point where we can resell downloaded books on Ebay?
    Another market demographic, perhaps?

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  2. Love the blog! I found it a few years ago and check in from time to time. I live in CT as well, and I try to hit up tag/estate sales when I can. I admire your self control to not buy everything that strikes you as strange or funny. I have not reached that point yet, which unfortunately means I own things like a children's book called "The Story of a Round Loaf". The Spin The Bottle game is something I absolutely could not have passed up. I think I might have framed the box lid!

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  3. Thanks for the comment Jen! I am always looking for guest writers, feel free to write up something on how you found "The story of the round Loaf" with a scan of the cover and submit it.

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