1Q1A Greek to Me Mary Norris

The Avid Reader Show

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of the Avid Reader . Today our guest is Mary Norris, author of this her second book Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen, published April 2 by Norton. Her first of course was Between You And Me: Confessions Of A Comma Queen back in 2015, the first time she and I spoke together.
Mary began working at the New Yorker in 1978 (although we learn a lot about her life prior to that) and was a query proofreader at the magazine for 24 years.
She is best known for her pieces on pencils and punctuation and also introduced me to Blackwing 602s.
Oh—I almost forgot—Mary will be speaking and reading at the Free Library downtown on April 15th at 7:30. For more information on this you can go to our website WSB or freelibrary.org.
Greek To Me is a book that takes the form of an interior and exterior journey. Mary tells us about her childhood, her parents, her initial love of language and primarily, as it should be, Greek. As her passion and fascination with the language and the land grows, we find ourselves drawn in, not only to the travelogue aspect of this book, but to the history of a language, its vagaries and its hidden presence in our everyday lives.
Plus there is a lot of ouzo in this book and who could argue with that?