Rom-com in a bookstore could have been much more

“The Moment of Everything” by Shelly King (Grand Central, 267 pages, $15 paper)

Not to judge a book by its cover, but a cover with a picture of rows of books – obviously in a bookstore – plus a cat peeking over the edge of a row has a certain appeal to readers. “The Moment of Everything” has a bookstore, and a cat, but the bookstore feels like it’s there because it’s a more interesting setting than an office, and the cat is more or less decoration.

The premise of this novel is that Maggie, a laid-off tech worker in Silicon Valley – a Southern transplant, but beyond the sweet iced tea and the pearls-wearing mother, she could have been from anywhere – is wallowing in self-pity and trashy romance novels, until she gets back on her feet. She’s hanging around the Dragonfly used-bookstore so much she gets hired by the owner. After finding an edition of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” with handwritten notes between “Henry” and “Catherine,” she posts the notes on the Dragonfly’s website, which she is revamping, and (of course) the whole thing goes viral.

Even as Maggie rails against romantic-comedy movies (in language not suitable for a newspaper), the plot of this book is pretty much a rom-com: the recent breakup, the obligatory gay best friend, the potential new man, the final realization of one’s true career calling. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing – the writing is breezy, clever and at turns both touching and funny, but the plot is largely superficial and predictable, and not really about books. There’s no reference to the actual story of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” beyond a perfunctory book-club discussion, Maggie doesn’t go on a search for Henry and Catherine but finds out their identities almost accidentally, and the books and the bookstore seem fetishized more than actually loved.

“The Moment of Everything” is a pleasant enough diversion, perfect for a plane ride, a rainy evening or one last summer afternoon at the pool. But it had the potential to be so much more than it turned out to be, which is always a bit of a disappointment.

“Gwynne’s Grammar: The Ultimate Introduction to Grammar and the Writing of Good English” by N.M. Gwynne (Knopf, 249 pages, $19.95)

N.M. Gwynne, who’s already caused a stir in Britain with his promotion of Latin as the solution to all the world’s problems, or at least the educational ones, has here compiled a collection of how language “ought” to be written. The key is the word “ought,” which implies more than a little judgmentalism, borne out in the book through his use of epithets such as “crass illiteracy” and his tone of general superiority.

Yes, there are standards of writing that people who want to be successful need to follow. But Gwynne apparently never met a shibboleth, peeve or “rule” not based in actual English grammar that he didn’t like – don’t split infinitives, don’t begin sentences with conjunctions, etc.

The last third of the book is a reprint of Strunk’s original 1918 “Elements of Style” (before White got his hands on it), which is fun to read simply from a historical point of view, but not particularly helpful for today’s writers.

If you are a person who thinks that “these darn kids today” are ruining language, this is the book for you. If you are a person trying to improve your writing, plenty of other grammar books out there will do a better job of helping you.

This story was originally published September 13, 2014 at 7:00 PM with the headline "Rom-com in a bookstore could have been much more."