看了你的回帖我跑到Amazon上去看了一些差評，有一個人是這樣寫的（我覺得他/她說的比較中肯，雖然這並不會改變我對該書可取的之處的看法）：
10 of 13 people found the following review helpful
on April 4, 2014
"Every person of intelligence should be able to use his mother tongue correctly. It only requires a little pains, a little care, a little study to enable one to do so, and the recompense is great."
PROs:
* Lots of good information without wasted words
* Contains more than just grammar, such as the history of the English language
* Huge list of the best authors, poets, and books
CONs:
* Some outdated usage of words, such as "thou" and "thee" (was written in 1917)
* Entire sections are now almost irrelevant, such as the letter writing section
* Not enough examples to solidify definitions and usage
* Becomes tedious and hard to concentrate on towards the middle of the book
* Much of the advice is common sense, such as "read the masters"
"In employing the long sentence the inexperienced writer should not strain after the heavy, ponderous type. Johnson and Carlyle used such a type, but remember, an ordinary mortal cannot wield the sledge hammer of a giant. Johnson and Carlyle were intellectual giants and few can hope to stand on the same literary pedestal."
The book starts out as a nice refresher on the parts of speech, something almost all of us learn but few remember. The usage of these words, such as adverbs and prepositions, came back to me with relative ease after reading the short definitions provided. The problems arose when the book got into more technical detail, such as instead of simply "verbs", there are "transitive/intransitive verbs" + the tenses, etc. One example to describe what a noun is is fine, but only one example for the more tedious parts of speech simply isn't enough. It got to the point where I was lost because he was using terms that he didn't solidify into the reader's mind, making me skim large portions of the book.
The first half of the book is pretty much grammar review, then it goes into letter writing, which is almost completely useless today. The most interesting part of the book was actually the end where it went over the history of the English language and how it developed. There is also a very large section where he goes through the works of literary giants such as Shakespeare and Milton and shows that they are surprisingly filled with mistakes that the average person wouldn't notice. This part, although slightly interesting, was much too pedantic for me.
My favorite part of the book was actually the short list of greatest authors, poets, and books. The problem is, he merely listed names instead of explaining why they were included. It would have been nice to hear his reasoning on why he chose who he chose, such as what makes each writer uniquely great, or what makes certain books stand above the rest.
Overall, I would not recommend this book unless you absolutely don't want to spend any money. There are probably far better and more updated books for less than $3. The book does a lot of things, but none of them particularly well, and too much of it is useless for the modern reader.
"In the works of Shakespeare, the most wonderful genius the world has ever known, there is the enormous number of 15,000 different words, but almost 10,000 of them are obsolete or meaningless today."
PROs:
* Lots of good information without wasted words
* Contains more than just grammar, such as the history of the English language
* Huge list of the best authors, poets, and books
CONs:
* Some outdated usage of words, such as "thou" and "thee" (was written in 1917)
* Entire sections are now almost irrelevant, such as the letter writing section
* Not enough examples to solidify definitions and usage
* Becomes tedious and hard to concentrate on towards the middle of the book
* Much of the advice is common sense, such as "read the masters"
"In employing the long sentence the inexperienced writer should not strain after the heavy, ponderous type. Johnson and Carlyle used such a type, but remember, an ordinary mortal cannot wield the sledge hammer of a giant. Johnson and Carlyle were intellectual giants and few can hope to stand on the same literary pedestal."
The book starts out as a nice refresher on the parts of speech, something almost all of us learn but few remember. The usage of these words, such as adverbs and prepositions, came back to me with relative ease after reading the short definitions provided. The problems arose when the book got into more technical detail, such as instead of simply "verbs", there are "transitive/intransitive verbs" + the tenses, etc. One example to describe what a noun is is fine, but only one example for the more tedious parts of speech simply isn't enough. It got to the point where I was lost because he was using terms that he didn't solidify into the reader's mind, making me skim large portions of the book.
The first half of the book is pretty much grammar review, then it goes into letter writing, which is almost completely useless today. The most interesting part of the book was actually the end where it went over the history of the English language and how it developed. There is also a very large section where he goes through the works of literary giants such as Shakespeare and Milton and shows that they are surprisingly filled with mistakes that the average person wouldn't notice. This part, although slightly interesting, was much too pedantic for me.
My favorite part of the book was actually the short list of greatest authors, poets, and books. The problem is, he merely listed names instead of explaining why they were included. It would have been nice to hear his reasoning on why he chose who he chose, such as what makes each writer uniquely great, or what makes certain books stand above the rest.
Overall, I would not recommend this book unless you absolutely don't want to spend any money. There are probably far better and more updated books for less than $3. The book does a lot of things, but none of them particularly well, and too much of it is useless for the modern reader.
"In the works of Shakespeare, the most wonderful genius the world has ever known, there is the enormous number of 15,000 different words, but almost 10,000 of them are obsolete or meaningless today."
