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Pandas and Grammar
By
Jen Chung
Published Jan 6, 2004
Modified Mar 6, 2008
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By
Jen Chung
Published Jan 6, 2004
Modified Mar 6, 2008
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For the copy editors, grammarians, and fastidious English majors in our midst, Gothamist is sad that Lynne Truss's book Eat Shoots & Leaves is only coming Stateside this spring. It is, at the Times calls it in a flattering feature about Ms. Truss, "witty foray into the shadowy world of punctuation." The book, an unexpected bestseller in Britain, would have made a great stocking stuffer, but we'll have to settle for making it a Easter basket/ Passover surprise gift. And the title is a play on a panda grammar joke:
A panda walks into a cafe.
The panda orders a sandwich, eats it and then fires a gun into the air. On his way out, he tosses a badly punctuated wildlife manual at the confused bartender and directs him to the entry marked "Panda."Whereupon the bartender reads: "Panda. Large black-and-white bearlike mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."
Though some may think the book's cover is catchy, we believe the book's success is because it's really telegraphing, "Eats, Shoots & Leaves and Is the Cutest Animal." If a book came out with a picture of San Diego baby panda cub Mei Sheng (below), it'd be an automatic bestseller.
Buy Eats, Shoots & Leaves from Amazon.co.uk
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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