Blowing Things Up

Every now and then I get really frustrated with some inanimate object and I threaten to blow it up. Animate objects tend to be threatened with being lit on fire. I have just decided that this recently attempted book is so bad it should be both set on fire and blown up. I simply haven't figured out which to do first.

I've been attempting to read The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson. Mr. Bryson has advanced several theories on the forming of English and he attempts to use this book to back them up. It's not really a scholarly tome, since he's pretty hit-or-miss about where he got his information from. Sadly, it's also not a humorous book either, since it seems to consist primarily of lists of words. Not exactly a thrilling read.

Mr. Bryson wanders around poking at the beginnings of English in a half-hearted way in the first part of the book. If you took everything he claims literally, then English was more or less invented by Shakespeare. I'm fairly baffled by that and I'm sure Chaucer, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson would object as well.

He makes a stab at interesting information in chapter 7 when he starts talking about regional varieties of English. Sadly, he wanders into jargon and word lists again really quickly. Just because I happen to know what a shibboleh is, doesn't mean that many people picking this book up randomly will. In fact, most of the book wanders back and forth between scholarly jargon and speculations, and a sort of buddy-buddy storytelling that doesn't even pretend to be able to back itself up. Of course, you have to fight your way through the maddening lists of words that seem like someone was just trying to pad out the word count.

While I generally try my best to read all the way through a bad book, particularly one recommended to me by someone I respect, I had to quit reading this one. Around chapter 10 I was so fed up with the circular logic and random word lists that I pitched the book across the room. Please don't sic the librarians on me.

Bah! Lucky for this book, it belongs to the library. I'm going to take it back there today and try to locate something better written and with decent footnotes. Or maybe just a nice juicy romance novel, whichever.

Bryson, Bill. The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way

New York. William Morrow And Company, Inc 1990