avrelia

Do you know what is my favourite book right now? Lynne Truss, Eats, shoots and leaves: it is smart, funny, and about punctuation! What else a girl may need? (well, lots of stuff, but that’s another topic.)

Seriously, as much as I love fiction, I often feel more passionate about non-fiction books on languages and history. It was this way since I was a child. I wouldn’t trade my fairytales on my encyclopedia, but the fairytales were a staple reading, whereas encyclopedias were a new magical, enticing world of knowledge about Stuff. I know a lot of Stuff since then, I’ve always been interested in Stuff that is hardly applicable in life.

One of my favourite books was A Book About Language – translated from English, though, of course I cannot name its author now. It was telling a lot of fancy stuff about different languages, and alphabets, and hieroglyphs, and smoke signals. The history of writing, the curious facts, the games with words – and thanks to the translator, appropriate examples with Russian language were included along with the English ones.

Languages are so much fun to read about.

ETA: But going back to Lynne Truss. She doesn’t not explain every punctuation rule in English language, instead she talks about history of punctuation, its meaning, its changes through the time – together with language changes. She muses on prospects for the future of punctuation, rants about common misuse and indifference to the rules, overviews the proper usage, and she does it all in a wonderfully witty manner that makes me want to quote the whole book here – and I would if I didn’t have to return it to the library yesterday.

Cantabank – second-rate singer of ballads
Dammarel – an effeminate man who spends all his time entertaining or courting women, and who is disinclined to the company of his own sex
Demivierge –a woman who is sexually promiscuous but retains her virginity
Dongon – a person who is smart but appears stupid
Dunderwhelp – a detestable numbskull