After six months and nine days, I have finally finished this beast of a book. It’s hard to say what it is that made this book take so long. At 544 pages, it’s hardly the longest book I’ve recently read. I do have a degree in Linguistics, so I can’t say the subject matter was over my head. Maybe it’s just that this book is so packed with information, examples, quotes, and evidence that my brain felt a little overloaded every time I picked it up. Because of that, I kept it in my purse, pulling it out over lunch, while traveling, while waiting for friends to show up, so on and so forth, until little by little, I came to the end.
And now that I’ve finished, I don’t really know what to say. Some parts are wonderful – I’m partial to morphology and childhood language acquisition, so I flew through those pages. Other parts barely held my interest, such as the attempted construction of speaking machines. All in all, don’t have a strong opinion either way on this book. It’s a worthy read for anyone with a strong interest in language or linguistics, but the average person will probably get bored.
Final rating: ★★★☆☆
[also posted here]
The Bibliophagist 