Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog : The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences, by Kitty Burns Florey

I never diagrammed a sentence in my life. I was born just a few years too late to have been subjected to this kind of teaching, but the concept has always sort of appealed to me. Now that I've read this book, I have eliminated that wish. It looks really deadly (though I bet I would have loved it when I was 12!).

This book explains the history of sentence diagramming, as well as the thought processes behind the men who 'invented' it in the 19th century. She also discusses the effect diagramming had--or didn't have--on several major authors including Hemingway and Proust. Along the way, she diagrams some representative sentences and disabuses readers of the impression that diagramming actually affects grammar skills. An example of this is Gertrude Stein who could diagram like a demon, but made up her own grammatical rules.