Like many people I am mildly interested in where words come from and I’ve occasionally read and reviewed books like David Crystal’s By Hook or By Crook which looks at where English place-names come from. Unless books like these are skilfully written they can quickly become tedious and its usually best to get this sort [...]
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. . . written by Tom Cunliffe, of East Sussex, England (to read more about me see my About page).
It consists of book reviews and more general articles about reading and currently receives over 10,000 unique visitors each month. So far 290 book reviews have been published. My currently-reading shelf:  This website is archived for posterity in the British Library's UK Web Archive 
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Elif Batuman’s book of essays, The Possessed, loosely based on the joys of reading classic Russian literature, turns out to be a bit of a hodge-podge of travel-writing, literary criticism and a personal reading history, enlivened by a butterfly mind that flutters from one subject to another without really landing for too long on any [...] In The Prodigal Tongue, Mark Abley has provided us with a tour of the state of the English language in Britain and around the world. His main conclusion seems to be that although “English” is the new Esperanto, a world language spoken by people on every continent, its not so much standard English that predominates [...] With By Hook or By Crook David Crystal has provided us with an entertaining travelogue of selected part of (mostly) England and Wales. The reader accompanies Crystal as he meanders around various small towns (Haye on Wye, Stratford on Avon etc), finding many interesting places along the way and recounting many tales and anecdotes about [...] |
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