I really wanted to like this book.

F recommended it to me, and she has generally good taste in books. And then I heard the author interviewed on NPR yesterday, so it seemed like fate when the book arrived at the library today. But, as it turned out, this book was not what I expected, and in fact…it just wasn’t very good. It was pop in the worst possible way. Dreck, even.

I had initially thought that the book was a more scholarly work, so I was surprised when it was so thin, but I thought it might end up being a humourous treatise on language. As it turned out, though, it was just a mishmash of random crap, crammed together for no apparent reason. It was a book of tidbits, really, with the most interesting ones showcased in the sidebars.

And, yes, there were some interesting tidbits, and some parts of the book were intriguing, but as a whole, it just didn’t pull together for me. It felt like the author had thumbed through language books at random, and for people who aren’t familiar with parts of speech, I could see the book being incredibly confusing, as she threw things like “genetive” around like confetti.

Honestly, I just found this book rather pointless. If you’re the kind of person who likes to squirrel away arcane bits of knowledge (which I am), you’d think this book would appeal to you, but it was just so poorly presented and organized, rampaging about like a runaway colt, that it was hard to feel gripped or even interested in the content. I also disagree with her disagreement about the idea that some people are language people and some people are not. I happen to agree with that statement; I really do think that some people are naturally gifted with and interested in languages and language, and others are not. And it’s cool. Everyone has unique interests and skills, from language to math.

I’d take a pass on this one, if I were you.

Demographics:

Biting the Wax Tadpole, by Elizabeth Little. Published 2007, 180 pages. Linguistics.