Tag: Languages

Bill Bryson – Made in America | Review

Title: Made in America

Author: Bill Bryson

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count: 480

Rating: 3.25/5

As a general rule, I’m a pretty big fan of Bill Bryson, although I will admit that I’ve enjoyed some of his books more than others. This is one of the ones that I didn’t quite enjoy as much as the others, but mostly because it’s just a super dense read and because the print on it is so tiny that you feel like you’re straining your eyes just to read it.

The good news is that the core subject matter here is pretty interesting, especially if you’re the kind of person who’s quite bookish or who’s fascinated by the written word. That’s because it basically covers the history of American English, beginning at the beginning with the formation of America and carrying on through pretty much to the modern day.

That gives this book a pretty weird vibe wherein it feels kind of like a history book and kind of like a dictionary, which is why I made this book one of my bedtime books. You’d have to be kind of mad to pick this up as your main read because of how difficult it is to lose yourself in it. It’s not really one of those books that you can binge on, you know?

With all of that said, there’s some great stuff in here, and I particularly liked the origin stories for some early Americanisms. Because of the makeup of the United States and its early colonies, US English has a bunch of words borrowed from French and Spanish, as well as from the many Native American languages that are now sadly extinct.

The thing that I struggled with was the way that so much of the text just consisted of italicised words in lists and stuff. You’d get a couple of paragraphs of really fascinating history and then just as you’re gearing up and getting into it, he’d hit you with a long list of the different words that relate back to that bit of history and eventually I just found my eyes glazing over.

So I think it would have been a little more interesting if he’d selected fewer words to talk about and made it matter, rather than just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. That makes it a better choice for a reference book perhaps, especially with the comprehensive sources and index at the end, but it doesn’t work so well if you’re just trying to read it like a normal book.

So make of all of that what you will. I would probably recommend it to people who are interested in language and the origins of words, but not to the general reader. Even if you’re a bit of a Bryson fan, you might find it heavy going. Yeah.

Learn more about Made in America.


EUPL – Nine Prize Winning Authors from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania | Review

Title: Nine Prize Winning Authors from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

Author: EUPL

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 164

Rating: 3.5/5

 

EUPL - Nine Prize Winning Authors from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

EUPL – Nine Prize Winning Authors from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

 

This collection brings together nine different authors from The Baltics including a few Latvian authors that I heard about during my visit to the country. On top of that, I’d already read Breathing into Marble by Laura Sintija Cerniauskaite, a Lithuanian author, and so at least part of this was a re-read for me.

The only real problem with this book is from the format itself, because it only contains excerpts of longer works. That said, it’s made me want to look into some more of them, including Doom ’94 by Janis Jonevs, who I was lucky enough to meet in Riga.

I also liked that each of the stories was accompanied by the initial, untranslated text of the excerpt. It was fascinating to see the languages differing from English and each other.

 

EUPL

EUPL

 

Click here to buy Nine Prize Winning Authors from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.