Sunday Evening Stretch

There are many Sunday nights that I’d rather not read and instead spend time with my husband or preparing for the days ahead. Much as I love it, I wish I didn’t have to cram so much reading in on the weekends. It’s just impossible to get through books during the week, when I tend to take work home. The fourth book sometimes requires effort; it is the one that I’d drop every now and then if I could.

This morning I woke up once again with a linguistic bent. Howard Richler’s A Bawdy Language: How a Second-Rate Language Slept Its Way to the Top fit the bill. The author, a Montrealer, is one of the several solid English Language writers out there, in good company with Richard Lederer, William Safire, Bill Bryson, and David Crystal, to name a few. A Montreal Gazette columnist, he writes in a conversational way that appeals to an inquisitive but general audience. I very much appreciate the short chapters too. This would have made excellent bus reading.

After hours of housework ate up the afternoon (neatness, unfortunately, is not my forte), I needed to be transported. My ticket was Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. No, I didn’t read the book years ago, nor did I see the film. Part of my personal library collection, it’s lucky to have even been cracked open this decade. That said, it read like a breeze. Not romantic, but subtle. You don’t so much get a snapshot of a town in 17th century Netherlands as you do a portrait of the domestic and private life in that time and place. I think that this book did so well because of that keyhole feeling the text imparts. It suited my mood perfectly.

I’ll sign off before today slips into tomorrow, but you can be sure I’ll return.

Comments

[Gawain]

"A Bawdy Language: How a Second-Rate Language Slept Its Way to the Top "

Wd you tell us in a few words -- one sentence is enough -- what this book is about? I'd have order it from overseas, id like to know more before i pay for the shipping... ;-)

[gawain]

Sorry, i found it on amazon. there is an editorial reeview.

[The Library Girl]

It's a bit of an English miscellany. There's a chapter on Black English, one on Yinglish, 'nym' words, euphemisms, obsolete words, etc. There are also chapters at the end of the book about word games like anagrams and palindromes. Richler (cousin to the late novelist Mordecai) has a few other books as well. For what it's worth, he's giving a talk in my library in a couple of weeks entitled 'Variety: the Spice of English'. Cheers!