Eats, Shites and Leaves

by Antal Parody

Book Overview

Eats, Shites and Leaves is a celebration of all things shite about the misuse of English, highlighting the prevalence of absent apostrophes, ghastly grammar, suspect sentences, rambling... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1843170981
• ISBN13: 9781843170983
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Michael O'Mara Books
• Length: 165 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Grammar Police

A great little book; useful ; appeal for 10-year olds, teachers of English, students of English. T.V. newscasters and weathercasters should read it and apply it.

"History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there." Georg

History holds great fascination;but I don't mean the stuff they fed you in school.A.Parody takes us into the wilderness of history and covers things that you will never hear about in "an Approved Curriculum" that you were subjected to in what is passed off as History.It is unbelievable, that the "halls of learning" have managed to take a subject that is so interesting and turn it into a dreadful experience for students.If you doubt what I am saying;just think how utterly bored students were in any of your History classes--see!! In this entertaining and interesting little tome,Parody covers hundreds of interesting facts,people,events and other historical things that you never heard of in your History classes. I can remember ,many years ago,taking a course in Ancient History that was covering who and what civilizations invented what.The teacher had actually drawn my attention away from one of the girls in the class;and I began to ask myself,with all these inventions,I wonder who atually invented the wheel.When the teacher asked, if there were any questions,and received blank stares and silence,I interrupted the tranquility by asking,"Who invented the wheel?" The teacher was surprised by my question,and weakly replied,that it was not mentioned in the book.I suggested that it was a big ommission,because I think it was mankind's greatest invention.Well;In this book you'll find the answer. Wait until you read "Less Begatting,Please" on page 67.Here is where you will really find out the history of birth control,and none of it was ever taught in school. To show you how convoluted and uninformative history can be;you will be amazed by some of the quotes from no less than Albert Einstein,such as this,"If my theory of relativity is proven successful,Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world.Should my theory prove untrue,France will say thatI am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew." Now, just about everyone thinks that a fellow by the name of Crapper (1836-1910)invented the toilet.Even something as mundane as toilets can be interesting historically,and Parody has some different aspects of history for us here. There is evidence of primitive drains and cesspits dating back to 6000BC.In the ruins of King Minos,s palace of Crete in 1500BC,flushing toilets have been found . In Victorian times,up to 180 people used the same privy every day.(that works out to 8 minutes for each person,based on 24 hour use,probably necessitating a need for speedreading.)And even today 40 percent of the world's population lacks indoor plumbing. History books go to great detail in explaining how the English defeated the Spanish Armada.That is a lot of BS,! Parody tells the real story.In 1588,a major storm sank most of the Spanish Armada,killing an estimated 20,000 sailors.As a further point of interest,I was visiting an old graveyard in Galway ,Ireland and found to my surprise,that one of the Spanish Armadaships w

"[...] English"

As someone with a degree in English I found this book very funny. Some of the content really made me think about where he got his examples from. Then I realized people talk and write like that everyday and to the average person it sounds/looks fine. It's nice to know that there are other people out there who are bothered by the use of the English language. It was something to easily read in my spare time that made me laugh and had people around me wondering why.

A Parody ?

The title of the book (and the authors name viz. A Parody) seems to indicate that it is a spoof on the hugely-popular recent book with a similar name "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" (By Lynn Truss). The book starts off by saying that it is ok to make grammatical mistakes (something which the Lynn Truss book considers as a blasphemy) but the book is not about bad english or its usage. I found the book to be about the magic of the English Language. How different things can mean different things in different contexts. The book talks about cliches, maxims, abbreviations, political gaffes, spoonersims. You name it. Like I said, through examples of bad english and bad grammer, the author (is his name actually A. Parody?) shows us the appeal of the English language. Not to be missed!