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Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory
Roy Blount Jr. · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorMade in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
Bill Bryson · 417 pages
Bill Bryson turns away from the highways and byways of middle America, so hilariously depicted in his bestselling The Lost Continent, for a fast, exhilarating ride along the Route 66 of American language and popular culture. In Made in America, Bryson de-mythologizes his native land - explaining how a dusty desert hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood, how the Wild West wasn't wo
The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language
Mark Forsyth · 373 pages
The Transitive Vampire
Karen Elizabeth Gordon · 144 pages
Playful, practical, this is the style book you can't wait to use, a guide that addresses classic questions of English usage with wit & black humor. Black-&-white illustrations throughout.
Born To Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods
Michael Wex · 328 pages
A serious but fun look at Yiddish idioms, phrases, and metaphors.
Between You Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen
Mary Norris · 228 pages
A New Yorker copy veteran presents laugh-out-loud descriptions of some of the most common and vexing errors in language and usage, drawing on examples from classic literature and pop culture while sharing anecdotes from her work with celebrated writers.
Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries
Kory Stamper · 296 pages
"Brimming with intelligence and personality, a vastly entertaining account of how dictionaries are made - a must read for word mavens. Have you ever tried to define the word "is?" Do you have strong feelings about the word (and, yes, it is a word) "irregardless?" Did you know that OMG was first used in 1917, in a letter to Winston Churchill? These are the questions that keep lexicographers up at n
Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages
Ammon Shea · 239 pages
An obsessive word lover's account of reading the Oxford English Dictionary cover to cover. *Summary From [Worldcat][1]* [1]: http://www.worldcat.org/
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
Lynne Truss · 209 pages
The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics
John Pollack · 212 pages
The Superior Person's Book of Words
Peter Bowler · 147 pages
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English
John McWhorter · 230 pages
Why do we say "I am reading a catalog" instead of "I read a catalog"? Why do we say "do" at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, author McWhorter distills hundreds of years of lore into one lively history. Covering the little-known Celtic and Welsh influences on English, the impact of the Viking raids and the Norman Conquest,
Lingo: A Language Spotter's Guide to Europe
Gaston Dorren · 304 pages
"Spins the reader on a whirlwind tour of sixty European languages and dialects, sharing quirky moments from their histories and exploring their commonalities and differences ... [and taking] us into today's remote mountain villages of Switzerland, where Romansh is still the lingua franca, to formerly Soviet Belarus, a country whose language was Russified by the Bolsheviks, to Sweden, where up unti
What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves
Benjamin K. Bergen · 287 pages
"Smart as hell and funny as fuck, this book explains why we can't stop swearing and what it tells us about our language and brains. Everyone swears. Only the rare individual can avoid ever letting slip an expletive. And yet, we ban the words from television and insist that polite people excise them from their vocabularies. That's a fucking shame. Not only is swearing colorful, fun, and often power
Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language
Patricia T. O'Conner, Stewart Kellerman · 288 pages
1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Francis Grose · 273 pages
In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language
Arika Okrent · 342 pages
Just about everyone has heard of Esperanto, which was nothing less than one man's attempt to bring about world peace by means of linguistic solidarity. And every Star Trek fan knows about Klingon, which was nothing more than a television show's attempt to create a tough-sounding language befitting a warrior race with ridged foreheads. But few people have heard of Babm, Blissymbolics, and the nearl
Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language
Richard Lederer · 176 pages
Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English
Patricia T. O'Conner · 256 pages
A guide to English grammar and style reveals the underlying logic of the language with the help of examples organized according to specific problems.
Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story
Michael Rosen · 431 pages
"How on Earth did we fix upon our twenty-six letters, what do they really mean, and how did we come to write them down in the first place? Michael Rosen takes you on an unforgettable adventure through the history of the alphabet in twenty-six vivid chapters, fizzing with personal anecdotes and fascinating facts. Starting with the mysterious Phoenicians and how sounds first came to be written down,
Lapsing Into a Comma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print--And How to Avoid Them
Bill Walsh · 256 pages
No writer's or editor's desk is complete without a battered, page-bent copy of the AP Stylebook. However, this not-so-easy-to-use reference of journalistic style is often not up-to-date and leaves reporters and copyeditors unsatisfied. Bill Walsh, copy chief for the Washington Post's business desk, addresses these shortcomings in Lapsing into a Comma. In an opinionated, humorous, and yes, curmudge
The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words from around the World
Adam Jacot de Boinod