It’s Officially Summer: What’s on Your Recreational Reading List?

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For those of us in and around the law school, the close of the academic year is often a time to catch up on all of that recreational reading we’ve been wanting to do. Maybe your recreational reading is a non-fiction book on a topic you’ve been wanting to learn more about; maybe it’s a classic you’ve read before (or have always wanted to read); maybe it’s the newest fiction you plan on reading on the beach. Whatever your choice of a for-fun read, let’s start a list here.

After many, many months, I finally finished Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, a book I finished just to say that I finished it.

I will recommend, however, Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. I downloaded the full book to my Kindle quite by accident; I meant to download just the sample because I just wasn’t sure about it. But within just a few days, I had finished the entire book. The writing was engaging and lively, and although it was easy to figure out the connection between Fern (the sister) and Rosemary (the narrator), the “why” of it all kept me reading until the end. (See here for a book review.) Fowler also wrote The Jane Austen Book Club, a book that was not nearly as interesting or as lively as We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

A few of my favorite reads from last summer include all three of Stieg Larsson’s books: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest. (Read with care – the subject matter is graphic and can be disturbing.) And although I am not a Hemingway fan, I did enjoy The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.

This summer, I may make it through Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century; it’s pretty thick, so I may end up being satisfied with reading the reviews. Also on my list are John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.

What are your recommendations for a summer read?

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Even More Commonly Confused Words

Below are just a few more commonly confused words, with those post adding to this one and this one on the same topic.

Although/while – A former student recently asked me about this combination. There isn’t, as far as I can tell, a hard and fast rule on when to use each of these terms, but there may be preferred usage, and that’s what I’ll explain here.  “Although” tends to mean “in spite of the fact that.” According to Mignon Fogarty, also known as Grammar Girl, “although” is called a concessive conjunction, which means that it expresses a concession. For example, Although he admits he saw her in the crosswalk, he drove through the intersection anyway.

“While” can also mean “in spite of the fact that,” but it can also mean “at the same time.” The same sentence with the word “while” instead of “although” now has one of two different meanings. While he admits he saw her in the crosswalk, he drove through the intersection anyway. In that construction, the sentence could mean that in spite of the fact that he saw her in the crosswalk, he chose to keep driving through the intersection. This sentence might imply some indifference on the driver’s part, which may (or may not) matter to the meaning of the sentence. This same sentence could also mean that at the same time that he saw her in the crosswalk, he drove through the intersection. Perhaps there’s less driver indifference with that construction.  “While” meaning “at the same time” is more clearly illustrated in this sentence: While Patrick raked the lawn, I cleaned the windows. In that sentence, the reader more clearly gets the sense that Patrick and I are each doing two separate tasks at the same time.

The difference between “although” and “while” may be slight, but when you’re striving for precision in your writing, you might be wise to choose “although” when you’re making a concession and “while” when you really mean “at the same time.”  

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MULS to Welcome Professor Linda Edwards in Fall 2014

faculty_lindaedwards2014-04Marquette University Law School’s legal writing professors are pleased to announce that Professor Linda Edwards, E.L. Cord Foundation Professor of Law at University of Nevada Las Vegas, will be joining us as a Boden Visiting Professor for the fall semester of 2014.

Professor Edwards is a leading scholar and leader in the field of legal writing.  She has authored five texts, three of them focused on legal writing, and has written numerous scholarly articles on legal writing, rhetoric, and law. Her recent book, Readings in Persuasion: Briefs that Changed the World (Aspen Law & Bus. 2012) will serve as the basis for the advanced legal writing seminar she will be teaching at MULS next fall. The book discusses why some briefs are more compelling than others and covers briefs written in some of the law’s most foundational cases: Muller v. Oregon (the Brandeis Brief), Brown v. Board of Education, Miranda v. Arizona, Furman v. Georgia, Loving v. Virginia, and others. Professor Edwards says the course will build on what students learned in Legal Analysis, Writing & Research 2, but from a more advanced perspective.

Professor Edwards practiced law for 11 years before becoming the coordinator of NYU’s Lawyering Program. She then spent 19 years at Mercer University School of Law, where she was the director of legal writing and taught legal reasoning and advanced legal writing, as well as property, employment discrimination, and professional responsibility. In 2009, she joined the faculty at UNLV.  Also in 2009, Professor Edwards was awarded the Association of Legal Writing Directors and Legal Writing Institute’s Thomas Blackwell Award for her lifetime achievements and contributions to the legal writing field.

We are very excited to welcome Professor Edwards next fall.

Continue ReadingMULS to Welcome Professor Linda Edwards in Fall 2014
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