What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorEats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
Lynne Truss · 209 pages
The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language
Mark Forsyth · 373 pages
The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics
John Pollack · 212 pages
Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing
Melissa Mohr · 336 pages
"Holy Sh*t tells the story of two kinds of swearing--obscenities and oaths--from ancient Rome and the Bible to today. With humor and insight, Melissa Mohr takes readers on a journey to discover how "swearing" has come to include both testifying with your hand on the Bible and calling someone a *#$&!* when they cut you off on the highway. She explores obscenities in ancient Rome--which were remarka
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,
Anonyponymous: The Forgotten People behind Everyday Words
John Bemelmans Marciano · 152 pages
A collection of short essays shares the whimsical stories behind many everyday terms, from the Earl of Sandwich's invention of the meat-and-bread combination to Etienne de Silhouette's money-saving alternative to the portrait.
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.
Me Talk Pretty One Day
David Sedaris · 272 pages
A recent transplant to Paris, humorist David Sedaris, bestselling author of “Naked”, presents a collection of his strongest work yet, including the title story about his hilarious attempt to learn French. David Sedaris' move to Paris from New York inspired these hilarious pieces, including the title essay, about his attempts to learn French from a sadistic teacher who declares that every day sp
The Deeper Meaning of Liff
Douglas Adams, John Lloyd · 156 pages
Does the sensation of Tingrith(1) make you yelp? Do you bend sympathetically when you see someone Ahenny(2)? Can you deal with a Naugatuck(3) without causing a Toronto(4)? Will you suffer from Kettering(5) this summer? Probably. You are almost certainly familiar with all these experiences but just didn't know that there are words for them. Well, in fact, there aren't--or rather there weren't, unti
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.
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/
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. · 364 pages
After 40 years of making a living using words in every medium, print or electronic, Blount still can't get over his ABCs. In this book, he celebrates the juju, the sonic and kinetic energies of letters and their combinations.
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
Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences
Kitty Burns Florey · 165 pages
Once wildly popular and used by teachers across America to teach grammar, sentence diagramming is now a lost art to most people. But from the moment she encountered it in the seventh-grade classroom of Sister Bernadette, Kitty Burns Florey was fascinated by the bizarre method of mapping the words in a sentence. Now a veteran copyeditor, Florey studies the practice in a funny look back at its odd h
Politics and the English Language
George Orwell · 48 pages
When in French: Love in a Second Language
Lauren Collins · 243 pages
"A language barrier is no match for love. Lauren Collins discovered this firsthand when, in her early thirties, she moved to London and fell for a Frenchman named Olivier--a surprising turn of events for someone who didn't have a passport until she was in college. But what does it mean to love someone in a second language? Collins wonders, as her relationship with Olivier continues to grow entirel
On Bullshit
Harry G. Frankfurt · 80 pages
Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it, yet we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves--and we lack a conscientious appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory." Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential mora