Random thing that amused me
You won't be surprised to hear that I have a few books on family history and how to and all that. I have two that I like on how to write a family history. One is a UK work, the other US. I picked them up and glanced at them recently, and got rather amused by their respective opening paragraphs once I had them out side-by-side:
US book:
You know you should do it. The relatives are nagging you to do it. You've probably attended a class or workshop on how to do it. You may have even bought or read other books telling you that you should do it and how you should do it. Write the family history? Sure. Sounds like a good idea. Maybe you've started, but for some reason, your enthusiasm to keep going wanes. You keep getting writer's block, or you can't figure out how you're going to cover all those generations in one book and make it interesting. Or you may be thinking, "I don't even know where to begin, because, heck, I'm no writer!"
UK book:
Why would anyone in his or her right mind want to write a family history, let alone publish it? I ought to be dissuading you from doing any such thing. It will cost you a great deal of effort, and could prove very tiring; it could be an expensive undertaking if you want it to be; it could put strains on your relationship with your nearest and dearest; you might not even be happy with the final product once you've brought it to completion. Have I dissuaded you? In a world which often seems to be aware of the price of everything and the value of nothing, you might think that only people who really out of their minds would embark on such an enterprise.
They are both helpful books, (and I think both authors are starting off slightly tongue-in-cheek,), but I couldn't help sniggering at how much they conformed to cultural type once I looked at them so close together...
Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there:
US book:
You know you should do it. The relatives are nagging you to do it. You've probably attended a class or workshop on how to do it. You may have even bought or read other books telling you that you should do it and how you should do it. Write the family history? Sure. Sounds like a good idea. Maybe you've started, but for some reason, your enthusiasm to keep going wanes. You keep getting writer's block, or you can't figure out how you're going to cover all those generations in one book and make it interesting. Or you may be thinking, "I don't even know where to begin, because, heck, I'm no writer!"
UK book:
Why would anyone in his or her right mind want to write a family history, let alone publish it? I ought to be dissuading you from doing any such thing. It will cost you a great deal of effort, and could prove very tiring; it could be an expensive undertaking if you want it to be; it could put strains on your relationship with your nearest and dearest; you might not even be happy with the final product once you've brought it to completion. Have I dissuaded you? In a world which often seems to be aware of the price of everything and the value of nothing, you might think that only people who really out of their minds would embark on such an enterprise.
They are both helpful books, (and I think both authors are starting off slightly tongue-in-cheek,), but I couldn't help sniggering at how much they conformed to cultural type once I looked at them so close together...
Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there: