Also of interest...in language arts

How to Write a Sentence

by Stanley Fish

(Harper, $20)

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Stanley Fish wants to end the tyranny of the 1959 writing guide known as “Strunk & White,” said Adam Haslett in the Financial Times. The Elements of Style is, according to Fish, hopelessly out of date not so much because of the rules it sets as because they were devised for an elite, homogenous audience. Avoiding dicta, Fish advances an alternative approach that eschews the older book’s insistence on brevity. Arguably, his thoughtful manual offers a “richer introduction to the capacities of English language sentences.”

The Use and Abuse of Literature

by Marjorie Garber

(Pantheon, $29)

“Since the invention of written language, we’ve been fighting over who was using it correctly and who was ruining it for the rest of us,” said Jessa Crispin in NPR.org. In this eloquent work, Harvard professor Marjorie Garber reviews that history—reminding us that even the plays of Shakespeare were once considered trash—to make a persuasive case that literature is not enduring any greater crisis today than it has before. Even today, she writes, “literature makes possible what we think and how we think it.”

Beautiful & Pointless

by David Orr

(Harper, $26)

Poetry critic David Orr has some unusual advice for readers of poetry, said Craig Morgan Teicher in Slate.com. Orr’s helpful guidebook to navigating poetry recognizes that some of our best poems are esoteric and initially inaccessible: His attitude seems to be that readers should “expect to be disoriented.” But he argues convincingly that readers should stop fretting about a poem’s meaning and simply enjoy the journey, and he “sprinkles deft close readings of all kinds of poems” throughout his wise manual.

The Pun Also Rises

by John Pollack

(Gotham, $22.50)

“It was with great trepidation that I o-punned this book,” said P.J. O’Rourke in The New York Times. But John Pollack, a former presidential speechwriter and world champion punster, has written an intriguing book on the history and significance of punning, beginning way back: In Paleolithic caves, archaeologists have uncovered figurines that each look like a naked female from one angle and an erect phallus from another. Pollack’s book isn’t without flaws: Like many puns, it “should be funnier.”