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One Hundred Names For Love: A Memoir (2012)

by Diane Ackerman(Favorite Author)

3.82 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0393341747 (ISBN13: 9780393341744)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

review 1: How could I not fall in love with people who walk around their house quacking the theme song to Masterpiece Theatre? I fell. I fell hard. Plus I had to look up LOTS of words in the dictionary, which made me happy because they were such juicy and wonderful words. I learned a lot a lot about what strokes are, what they do and how they work - not least how completely unique each one is and how completely unique it makes the person to whom it happened. While doctors and scientists know all sorts of things about which damaged areas of the brain affect which functions of body, mind, language - I was struck by how particular each brain has become by the time a stroke occurs and how very particular each person's pathway to healing the language function needs to be. (Probably other... more functions as well, but this book was language-focused.) And of course there's this intimate journey with two truly remarkable human beings - three, if you count Liz (& I do count Liz) - Diane Ackerman and Paul West. I'm impressed by (envious of?) that northeastern US writer thing too, how Oliver Sacks comes over when he's in town because of course they-all know each other. Just who you'd like to have drop by if someone in the family is trying to recover from a stroke! I wonder if the "mrok" sound Diane and Paul use to call to one another in their house comes from the Jason Fforde Thursday series? Wouldn't be at all surprised. Right up their rich, amazing, entertaining and terrifically dear literary and linguistic and creative alley. Now that I'm finished reading the book I feel a bit abandoned, exiled, orphaned even down here in the furthest corner of the US from where they live. BUT I have a consolation: I can still read all of their books (the ones I haven't yet read).
review 2: Fascinating. I'll return to reread and copy out some of the beautiful passages. The story is beautifully told. That said, it was perhaps a little repetitive at times. And a bit too heavy on the adjectives, though not as excessive as some of her Ackerman's writing. As one reviewer (at Amazon) put it, "Ackerman at times seemed to be trapped in a thesaurus. Thus, such off-putting sentences as, 'Yet somehow his brain slowly spelunked for his literary self, and found the rappel of sentences, the traverse of paragraphs, the slingshot of grammar, how clauses might be felicitously rigged.'" And I'm astonished that such a word maven as Ackerman would write "wreck havoc" -- twice! She also misspelled zyzzyva (as zyzzva) when she was using it as an example! No proofreader? Most writers and people fascinated with language know the word zyzzyva, because it's such a delightful and unusual word, not to mention its being the last word in the dictionary (though that may depend on your dictionary). less

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