Away With Words

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The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. [1] Cast [ edit ]

But what bothered me more than the length/content was the author's writing style, marked by an over-reliance on similes, many of them poorly executed. For example, when describing an audience, he notes that there are "vape pens galore, like shiny pan flutes at a Ren fair.” Gala has moved from Spain where she easily moved between Catalan and Spanish to northern Scotland where she must navigate through a new life with her Dad and his boyfriend in a small community. Once exuberant she becomes silent; once gregarious she becomes lonely. She befriends Natalie, a classmate whose anxiety has isolated her. Natalie’s selective mutism and Gala’s struggle to communicate in English create a bond for the two girls. What’s beautiful about this world, however, is that words and conversations leave traces. Natalie and Gala start collecting their own and other people’s words to communicate, to reflect and to encourage. The emotional appeal of handwriting and the emotional reveal of animal phrases. Should children be taught cursive writing in school, or is their time better spent studying other things? A handwritten note and a typed one may use the very same words, but handwritten version may seem much more intimate. Plus, English is full of grisly expressions about animals, such as there’s more than one way to skin a cat and until the last dog is hung. The attitudes these sayings reflect aren’t so prevalent today, but the phrases live on. Finally, the centuries-old story of the mall in shopping mall. Plus, agloo, dropmeal, tantony pig, insidious ruses, have a yen for something, a commode you wear on your head, a tantalizing word game everyone can play. Berkowitz's introduction to the Punslingers scene is a good example of his easy, generous approach to transportive detail and the gauzy metaphors that make this entire book about had-to-be-there moments possible. But for as gently funny as the book is, it would all be for naught if it were not a brisk read. He could have easily overdone it and put every good pun he heard in his text. The edit job to take a lot of those out, I assume, wisely confined the puns to two primary usages: ‘what it feels like to pun’ and the plot-advancing ‘here’s who won this Punderdome.’ (I wonder if you could really do this book if there wasn’t a competitive aspect to it. I’ve never read The Pun Also Rises and I don’t want to.) Berkowitz does a great job of making you like him, and like puns.Okay, after receiving a polite message from the author, I've decided to come clarify my original review, which may have been a bit too hard on the snark, and light on the review. A heart-warming and bittersweet examination of personhood, familial bonds and healing from loss” Lauren James, author of The Quiet at the End of the World If you speak both German and Spanish, you may find yourself reaching for a German word instead of a Spanish one, and vice versa. This puzzling experience is so common among polyglots that linguists have a name for it. • The best writers create luscious, long sentences using the same principles that make for a musician’s melodious phrasing or a tightrope walker’s measured steps. • Want to say something is wild and crazy in Norwegian? You can use a slang phrase that translates as “That’s totally Texas!” • Plus happenstance, underwear euphemisms, pooh-pooh, scrappy, fret, gedunk, tartar sauce, antejentacular, the many ways to pronounce the word experiment, a fun word quiz, and lots more. But Away With Words never takes itself seriously, and all that exegesis is pretty much unnecessary. The meat of the reading experience is to be viscerally immersed in the world of Punderdome, because it's fun. Bestselling author Alexandra Christo, author of TikTok sensation To Kill a Kingdom, introduces her new book, The Night Hunt (Hot Key Books), a dark...

The participants get to know each other because of their frequent interaction. Many of the punsters work as writers for tv shows, movies, or newspapers or comedians. Some newspapers thrive on utilizing puns in their headlines and stories. At the competitions, a category is announced and the contestants have ninety seconds to come up with as many puns as they can. They then present them to live audiences and are judged by the audience’s response. The book benefits from subject matter that translates very well to the written word, first of all. It’s fun to see him work more and more puns into the actual text as the book goes on: “Once the traction-less idea of a road trip was abandoned,” on 192, was pretty much the only “good” example, but the effort was enjoyable elsewhere. He’s a good writer.

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The problem with having a first person perspective for this book was that we read all of Gala's thoughts and apprehensions in English, a language she wasn't fluent in and yet voicing her thoughts so well in. This created a jarring contradiction between what was being said and the language it was being said in.

A book about family, friendship, and what it means to be you. One of those books you read in one day and think about forever.” Wibke Brueggemann, author of Love is for Losers If someone urges you to spill the tea, they probably don’t want you tipping over a hot beverage. Originally, the tea here was the letter T, as in “truth.” To spill the T means to “pass along truthful information.” Plus, we’re serving up some delicious Italian idioms involving food. The Italian phrase that literally translates “eat the soup or jump out the window” means “take it or leave it,” and a phrase that translates as “we don’t fry with water around here” means “we don’t do things halfway.” Also: a takeoff word quiz, why carbonated beverages go by various names, including soda, coke, and pop; fill your boots, bangorrhea, cotton to, howdy; milkshake, frappe, velvet, frost, and cabinet; push-ups, press-ups and lagartijas; the Spanish origin of the word alligator, don’t break my plate or saw off my bench, FOMO after death, and much more.Gala and her dad, Jordi, have just moved from home in Cataluna to a town in Scotland, to live with Jordi's boyfriend Ryan. Gala doesn't speak much English, and feels lost, lonely and unable to be her usual funny self. Until she befriends Natalie, a girl with selective mutism. The two girls find their own ways to communicate, which includes collecting other people's discarded words. They use the words to write anonymous supportive poems for their classmates, but then someone begins leaving nasty messages using the same method - and the girls are blamed.

Would suggest you read the physical copy to see the proper effect of the words and their appearance. The Kindle version didn’t create the same impact.Loved both the protagonists, Gala has a wonderful character, a dollop of selfishness totally appropriate to her age and situation, she's kind and brave, with Natalie adding the eccentric flair that brings out her own. Her dad's same-sex relationship is portrayed matter-of-factly and sympathetically, with the family issues she's experiencing resolved within the context of her own school story. Brooklyn, apparently. And Austin, TX, but we'll get to that in a minute. First Berkowitz drops you in the middle of Punderdome, the once-monthly pun competition that launched the board game of the same name. You show up and sign up for a competition slot, registering with a punny name (Berkowitz chose Punter S. Thompson). 5 competitors per round. Everybody gets a whiteboard and a marker. A topic is announced and you have 90 seconds to write down as many puns on the topic you can think of. Then, one by one, you tell them to the audience. It's an improviser's dream. Which makes sense, because most of the people who do well at Punderdome are a) improv folks, and b) stand-up comedians. A tale of two pun competitions, so… the best of times, the wurst of times (because things can get hammy, you see). If that doesn’t completely do your head in, or get on your nerves, you might be able to handle this book. Plus, your lobe of words indicates you have a lot of skull. Or something. Prolific Press (Anthology): https://prolificpress.com/bookstore/inwood-indiana-c-4/the-pop-machine-p-205.html?zenid=kuqgm0j7ps9frr7sf3k2h6j1u3