Making the Cat Laugh - Lynn Truss

Advantages: Charming book - makes you laugh
Disadvantages: Makes you cry too

...I have loved Deric Longden's books for many years and I found "Enough to Make a Cat Laugh" whilst browsing on Amazon. Having been reading more 'serious' books recently the thought of his light hearted style of writing really appealed to me so I ordered the book. The book chronicles a year in the life of the Longden household, starting with spring then summer, autumn and finishing with winter. The 'household' consists of Deric, his wife Aileen and their four cats: Arthur, Thermal, Tigger and Frink. Other members of the family include Arthur's wire brush and a sultana called Ralph - but you will have to read the book if you want to know more about these two! This is a book guaranteed to make you laugh if you have any connection with cats in the house yourself but, on the other hand, it is equally able to move you to tears... Read review

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Advantages: entertaining
Disadvantages: slightly negative tone

...The book is essentially a complaint about modern rudeness, of which the phrase 'talk to the hand', sometimes followed up with ''cos the face ain't listening', is an excellent example. This is not a guide to modern manners or etiquette, as Truss makes clear in her introduction, but there is some substance behind the light style, as is demonstrated by the bibliography. Essentially, there are six chapters in which Truss uses a mixture of conjecture, anecdote (lots of anecdotes) and historical detail to express her disgust at the lack of politeness, wonder where it went and establish the reasons why this is a problem. The issues she targets are unlikely to be divisive, although I do wonder whether teenagers really have any concept of private and public space anymore, so it may not appeal to those who grew up with msn always in... Read review

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Advantages: nicely presented, witty justification for sticklerdom
Disadvantages: do I really want to read it more than once?

...I admit it; I’m a stickler. My particular little bugbear is the confusion of “it’s” and “its”, not because I don’t make that mistake myself but because I have had it drummed into me to check repeatedly whether I mean “belonging to it (ITS)” or “it is (IT’S)”. Some of you, worse sticklers than myself, will have noticed that syntactically I am rather hit-and-miss, aching to fix misplaced apostrophes and yet doing terrible disservice to the humble ellipsis… It’s not just that either; I have done irreparable harm to commas and even on occasion to my charming assistant the apostrophe (as in my last op; answer at the bottom of this one!). If you have noticed, this is the book for you. This is the hymn to punctuation. Lynne Truss asks us to bear arms against the misuse of punctuation and go forth with our correction fluid and apostrophe... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful