first you write a sentence

• First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing ... and Life, by Joe Moran, is published by Publisher (2019)

I haven’t read it but I can tell from the reviews that I’d like to. I love books about words, writing, grammar and punctuation— remember Eats Shoots and Leaves (2003, by Lynn Truss)? I think my friend who recently gave me a book thought she was giving me that kind of book, about writing.—actually, that one was about punctation.

Suppose a Sentence by Brian Dillon (see my blog, January 0?0) is not that kind of book, I’m sorry to say. It is not a how-to. It is a series of essays triggered by a sentence from Shakespeare to James Baldwin, Thomas De Quincy to Frank O’Hara, George Eliot to Anne Carson., etc. The sentences are chosen from a collection of 45 notebooks Dillon has been keeping for years, and what odd sentiences!

From “O, o o o".” by William Shakespeare to a 16-line, single sentence paragraph by De Quincy, to a nine-word incomplete sentence by Fleur Jaeggy that Dillon uses as a spring,board to air his dislike of incomplete sentences (I don’t like them either), Dillon is erudite in his comments—but annoying.

I’m sorry to say.