This book can be better organised, but remains a brilliantly eloquent, philosophical, and thought-provoking work with countless laugh-out-loud parts and an innovative conclusion to boot. A thoroughly enjoyable and meaningful read like the other book of Lynne Truss’s that I have read so far. Manners are now under-rated and under-valued.

Yuck. What a whiner.

I vacillated between laughing out loud at her delightful wit and disagreeing with this author. But part of my problem is that I am not British, nor do I live there, so a lot of what she was describing didn't fit my observations. For instance, I can't imagine anyone getting as angry as she describes if people don't say thank you when you hold open a door for them. On the other hand, there are a lot of very cogent quotes from other authors, as well as examples and conclusions she drew from her own experience that made this worth reading. 13 years have passed since it was published, though, and in some instances, I think rudeness has become even more ingrained in our culture. Maybe not in a holding the door open way, but in our ability to communicate with civility.

Punctuation maven Lynne Truss (author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves) takes a stab at rudeness, ubiquitous in society today. Her book is very funny in spots and deadly serious in others, becoming a bit of a diatribe at times, but Truss is dead on in targeting this pervasive problem. If you mourn the disappearance of please, thank you, you're welcome, excuse me, and I'm sorry, and often wonder why parents tolerate outrageous public behavior in their little darlings, this book is for you!

From a blog post I wrote in 2005:

I adored Lynn Truss' first book, Eat, Shoots & Leaves. It was a great rant against the deterioration of our grammar skills. As someone who cringes every time she sees people use 'loose' instead of 'lose', 'you're' instead of 'your' or 'irregardless' in any fashion I found myself agreeing with every word of that text.

Truss' new book, Talk to the Hand - The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door, is another rant. The topic is how good manners seem to be leaving our society. She talks about cell phone use, the commonality of being told to eff off, the declining use of 'please' and 'thank you' and a myriad of other examples of civility becoming a thing of the past.

Truss is really quite witty and, though I found a few chapters a bit overdone, this was another book where I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with the message.

I didn't get all the way through it, but I am certainly finished with it.
Unlike Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, I felt like this book was more "thoughts of a curmudgeon" than "witty sociological banter based on linguistic developments. I just couldn't care about someone who is horrified about people talking on trains, or automated call centers or SKATEBOARDING.

I guess it was too much to ask that a book about the rise of cultural rudeness wouldn't get preachy here and there. It takes a pretty thick skin to go forth into modern society these days; as social observation, the book is pretty good, but as advice, some finger-wagging is bound to be inevitable. It might be literally impossible to write about etiquette without placing yourself higher on the social scale than those you want to inform.

Outrage is addictive, as anyone who watches a family member fall prey to Fox News will tell you. If you want to feed that addiction by feeling constantly alienated by some aspect of modern society, well, there are plenty of people out there willing to be rude to you. And it apparently doesn't even have to be personal. "Them damn kids with their cell phones..." ...are just as likely to be texting Mom to tell her that they're going to be late, rather than indulging in what we see as the endless banality of adolescence. I hold the door open for people and I don't particularly care whether they thank me for it or not, because it's not about creating a tidy little interaction to satisfy some social necessity; it's about not letting a heavy door swing shut in someone's face.

I could accept her crusade against poor punctuation because I'm a stickler for grammar myself, but now she seems to be taking the show on the road. The book does acknowledge some of these flaws, but it doesn't offer any solutions to them. As observation, this book gets five stars; as a solution, it gets one, so it averages out to about three.

I also have "Eat, Shoots, and Leaves" by this author which is a funny rant about improper use of the comma. Talk to the Hand although having some humorous moments, is really just a rant about the rudeness of the younger generations.

I bought Talk to the Hand thinking to add it to my writing and reference book shelf. Regrettably this book is more humorous reading and satire than writing help. A quick read as the author's prose is easy to follow.

There might be some writing gems hidden in this book, but I will have to go through it again a few more times to find them.

I’m not sure what the point of this book was. I didn’t find it interesting, funny, or really worth the time it took to read. Maybe I don’t get her sense of humor? I’m not sure. It just seemed like complaining more than anything else. I guess it just wasn’t for me.

Lynne Truss whines about rudeness.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Lynne Truss's "Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door" is a thoughtful, and at times, sarcastic and caustic, look at the decline of good manners in western society. As she states near the end of the book, "Rudeness is bad. Manners are good." She argues, quite forcibly, that by showing good manners people are giving respect toward others. Even some empathy factors in how we conduct ourselves in society. There is a moral responsibility to be civil to others, whether or not we know them. She also points there is a personal accountability that should be considered and that people make excuses for their ill-mannered, and criminal, behavior. You might find yourself agreeing with Ms. Truss if you're indignant about the lack of manners in present-day society. She writes with wit and humor to get her points across. And to show my manners, I say "thank you" to Ms. Truss for taking the time to write this book.

It's always a delight to read charming, middle-aged British writers be outraged in comical ways, and Lynn Truss is the queen of this, but I admit, I kept finding myself led about on trails of anecdote, obscure etiquette manuals, and pop psychology without really knowing where we're heading. Some of the "Six Good Reasons" had some sense to them: the absence of "please" and "thank you," the knee-jerk reaction people have to tell you to Eff Off if you ever catch them doing something antisocial or dangerous. But the waters are muddled as Truss sometimes seems to admit that people are maybe not half so rude as they might look from outside, but then she spins back around to righteous indignation.
And since I can't believe the subtitle is her actual suggestion, I'm left pondering what, if anything, she wants us to do about it. This isn't so much a call to a return to civic-minded consideration of others as a meandering, sometimes laugh-out-loud-sometimes-eye-roll rant. It feels like the rough draft of something that might be pretty darn good. I mean, the knee-jerk Eff-Off idea has kind of haunted me--what happens to a society when individuals assume that they are never in the wrong and should never take criticism as anything other than an affront to the core of their identity? But then I imagine a woman screaming the things at me that Truss admits to screaming in her head and I admit my reaction would be, perhaps, defensive as well. That's always the difficult about these kinds of rants--you can't be rude about rude people without it all going in circles. And so in circles we are led, sometimes feeling smug and sometimes surly.