No, You Cannot Make Fun of Plastic Cutlery

Aren't we all ( or at least most of us) fed up with the dictates of politically correct gendarmes narrowing the scope of "acceptable" language? These are a mirthless bunch, and the are having a "chilling effect" on humor, too. When I made a mild joke on social media about the spork, a hybrid piece of plastic cutlery, I got reamed, big time.

Here's the column I wrote about it on the website American Thinker .

On My Bookshelf

Alert readers may recall that in the last newsletter, which admittedly was bck in April, I raved about Kitchen Table Wisdom, but I was only halfway through with it. Now that I finished it, I can reaffirm that it deserved all the accolades it has received. It is filled with short, elegantly written stories from the author's life, from her perspectives as a patient with a serious, life-threatening illness, a physician who became a counselor to cancer patients, a daughter and a friend.

I just bought the newly published Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, written by Benjamin Dryer, the executive managing editor and copy chief of Random House. I've only just started it, but it's already a delight. Dryer teaches amusingly. Among his rules: "The passive voice is to be avoided," and "Sentence fragments. They're bad." If you're looking to tidy up your prose and refresh your knowledge of writing rules, this may be your go-to book.

Finally, I am on the edge of my seat as I close in on the ending of Perfect, a novel written by Rachel Joyce, the incredibly talented author of another of my favorite books, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. From the inside book jacket: "A spellbinding story of a young boy who is thrown, with far-reaching consequences, into the murky, difficult realities of the adult world." I won't say any more than this except to go and get this book!