I am an avid fan of Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent, the highly entertaining blog from the enlightening and renowned San Francisco literary agent for Curtis Brown. I toss these compliments around despite his rejection of my query regarding my novel-in-waiting, By the Light. Coincidentally, he was the first commenter here at Red Stick Writer. His featured topic on Wednesdays is You Tell Me. Last Wednesday, the topic for comment was favorite words, and I and many others provided fuel to the fire. Today's You Tell Me order of the day: What's your least favorite word? By the time I put my two cents in, I think Nathan had earned, two-cents worth at a time, somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.80. I was particularly pleased to incorporate a little shtick of mine about the Weekly Reader, so I thought I'd share my comments to Nathan's blog with you here:
I'm not a big fan of sasquatch. It sounds like a description of something that burst open after hitting your windshield.
Josephine Damian's choice of Uranus triggered some thoughts. It seems they now want us to pronounce it "urine us," whereas when I was being educated they called it "your anus". I wish they'd decide which way they want to go. Regardless, neither pronunciation adds elegance to your speech.
The planetary reference reminded me of a long-held beef of mine. In elementary school, we looked forward to each edition of the Weekly Reader. We were young and impressionable and didn't know that it was a lying rag. That publication led us to believe that we would be working a four-day workweek, that we would be driving a hovercraft, and that Prince Charles would be the King of England. None of these has come to pass. To add insult to injury, we now find that, though Weekly Reader told us there were nine, there are only eight planets. Hmm. Maybe they should have gotten rid of Uranus instead of Pluto.
