Pet Peeve: All Ready vs. Already

Okay, grammar fans (usage fans, whatever): This is a misusage I see all the time. The down and dirty of it:

all ready: Completely ready. You couldn't be readier. Or: Everybody in the room is ready. No one's left out.

"Are you all ready to go?" asked Mrs. March.
"Hardly," Amy said. "Beth, as usual, is too shy to stick her nose out the door, so we'll probably miss the fair."

already: Previously. Before. Been there, done that.

"It doesn't matter," said her mother. "After all, Beth has already been out this week. Let's leave her to her piano."

Already is also used to express frustration:

"Just go already!" Beth fumed.

Think of all ready as meaning all set. You'd never write alset, right?

I didn't think so.

image: By Trailer screenshot (Little Women trailer), via Wikimedia Commons

Happy Oscars, Everyone!

via Book Riot

The Life of Dickens in 5 Minutes or Less

An informative and fun cartoon video on the life of Charles Dickens, one of my very favorite authors.  Courtesy of those clever folks at the BBC:

Deal Announcement!

Well, I may have spent three years writing the book, six months searching for an agent, six months revising (again), another month on submission, several more weeks revising (again) ...

But the idea of publication, of my little book going to a printer's and finding a home on a Barnes & Noble bookshelf, still feels very fresh and new to me, especially today. Having polished up our baby and readied it for copyediting, we were ready to formally announce the book to the world. Here's my birth announcement, posted at Publisher's Marketplace by My Lovely Agent, Chris Richman of Upstart Crow Literary Agency:

That means more wine for me!

Pet Peeve: Lay vs. Lie

I haven't written a grammar peeve for a long time, mostly because this blog has been up, down, live, dead--you name it. But this point does peeve me from time to time.

Quick lesson:

To Lie (verb):
1. To tell an untruth : Don't lie to me. You didn't watch the Super Bowl, did you?
past tense: lied : Okay, I lied. I didn't even watch the commercials.
past perfect tense: had lied : If I hadn't lied, you would have made me watch the highlights on the DVR.

2.  To repose in a prone position : If football gives you a headache, why don't you go lie down?
past tense: lay : I lay down for an hour, but it didn't help.
past perfect tense: had lain : She had lain in her room for about an hour before her husband noticed that she wasn't present during the halftime show.

To Lay (transitive verb):
To set an object down: Lay down your book and watch the damned game, why don't you?
past tense: laid : I laid down my book for ten minutes, but the game gave me a headache, so I picked up the book again.
past perfect tense: had laid : If I had laid my book down sooner, I wouldn't have missed that touchdown. Oh well. Big whup.

So yes, I admit, too many of these words sound the same, and the tenses get all mixed up in each other's business. Just memorize a few key phrases that are correct and you'll remember the rule for this verb:

Lay down your weapon!
I must go lie down now, even though I lay down ten minutes ago.

Just remember: You can never "go lay down." Lay down ... what? Lay needs a direct object. You have to lay down a book, a magazine, your gun--something. It means put down, or set down.

And you can never "lie down a book." (Not as many people make this mistake.) Lie down is an intransitive verb; it can't take an object. Just lie down your own damned self and be done with it.

image: Madame Recamier by Jacques-Louis David. wikimedia.org

Review: DEADLINE by Chris Crutcher

Deadline by Chris Crutcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Eighteen-year-old Ben Wolf has a terminal illness--this he tells us right off the bat. But when will he tell the rest of his friends, family, and his amazing new girlfriend? In his quest for a "normal" year, Ben has the least normal year of his life. And Chris Crutcher is kind enough to share that year with us through Ben's voice.

Don't let Crutcher's glib dialogue and Ben's smart-aleck comments deceive you. This is a heavy topic. But as I heard Crutcher say in a keynote address to the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators not long ago, if you as a writer are going down the tragic road, you've got to go just as long down the comic road--and thankfully, he does just that. Through Ben, we get to know a cast of small-town characters, each with his or her own secrets, some as heavy as Ben's. How could you not love Ben's long-suffering father, who lovingly cares for his bipolar wife? Or Coach Banks, who has returned to this podunk high school after fleeing it years before? Or Rudy McCoy, so haunted by his past that only Ben really comes to know who he is? This is not an author given to lovingly crafted sentences, but one who writes people who live and breathe and sing off the page. Is this a sad novel? I shed tears, but it didn't depress me. It reaffirms life and love. We should all be so lucky.

Maybe you've heard that all of Crutcher's books have been banned or challenged, and Deadline is no exception. For those of you with delicate ears, be on the lookout for the f-word and the s-word. They do appear. There is some premarital teen sex presented about as pristinely as you could hope for. And yes, sorry, but teens do utter opinions in this book that may offend some conservative, pledge-allegiance-to-me sensibilities. You've been warned. But unlike some other reviewers, I didn't find this book to be a political tract. To me, it was about a boy who, having nothing left to lose, finally lives. So much of the time, we stifle the opinions of young people. We discard them, slough them off, silence them. Ben Wolf is not to be silenced. God bless him for that.

One other point: The book's got a lot of football in it. I don't know anything about football and don't want to. I have no interest in the Super Bowl or even the commercials that air during the breaks. And yet, I found even the footbally parts of this book compelling. And anyone who knows me knows that only a very gifted writer could persuade me to read anything about this sport, much less make it compelling.

Read the first chapter. Then see if you can put the book away. Go on, I dare you.





View all my reviews

Books to Drool Over

Hooray, dreams fulfilled! Ever since our cute little micro-Borders closed last year, I've been mourning the dearth of bookstores in our area. Like most large suburbs, we have the venerable Barnes & Noble--in fact, two of them here on the Kansas side of the metro--but there's something special about having a little bookshop on the corner, as it were. I suppose someone somewhere heard my sobbing, because some of the former employees of our now-defunct Borders Express got together and retooled the space into Shawnee Books & Toys, which is only blocks from where I live! I finally got around to stopping in today and I couldn't leave empty handed. I had to get ...

 

last year's Newbery winner is a fellow Kansan from Wichita!

14 writers spin tales around Van Allsburg's haunting drawings

been meaning to get this forever because the lovely Nova Ren Suma writes so wonderfully

recommended all over the place--gotta read it

 this just looks like pure fun--a mystery, puzzles, a dead magician, and sequels!

Happy Valentine's Day to me!