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Title: Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words by Bill Bryson ISBN: 0-7679-1042-7 Publisher: Broadway Pub. Date: 13 August, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (9 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Too good to pass up, and also useful
Comment: This book is an enormously easy, fun read. As a side benefit, it will improve your grasp of the English language. I liked it so much that I bought an electronic version for my PDA, so I'll always have it handy. Everyone needs it.
Rating: 4
Summary: Is there a concensus of opinion on this book . . . ?
Comment: As a freelance book editor for the past two decades, I'm one of that rather small, self-selected group of people who are likely to read grammar texts and style guides for pleasure. My copies of Follett and Patridge are well-thumbed, but I'm always willing to peruse a new effort. Bryson started out as a copyeditor for the Times of London, and was the compiler of _The Penguin Dictionary of Troublesome Words_ (of which this is actually a 2d edition), and he has a proven and felicitous writing style, so the book is both useful and a pleasure to read. Which is not to say that I don't have some nits to pick. Some of the problems he addresses are obvious, like the increasingly common disregard for the difference between "its" and "it's," and the bugbear of ending a sentence with a preposition. Then there are less commonly discussed screw-ups that, personally, make me wince when I hear or read them, like a car having a "collision" with a tree, or something being in "close proximity" with something else, or the difference between a "meteor" and a "meteorite," or the insistence that "noisome" has something to do with noise. And he handles all of those well and wittily. But many other entries seem to be spacefillers or else were carried over from a much more specialized list from his newspaper days. For instance, I've never had occasion to worry about the proper spelling of the Nullarbor Plain in Australia, or the Welsh word "eisteddfod." And how many writers confuse "cord" and "chord"? And an author or editor is expected to check the spelling of names like "coelacanth" and Amelia "Earhart" and "Alfa-Romeo" and "Meriwether" Lewis anyway. I can also think of a number of commonly misused words and terms that Bryson did not include, and for which a discussion would have been useful, such as the colloquial use of "ain't," and why "bugbear" has nothing to do with wildlife. I won't be adding this one to my ready-reference shelf, but it's worth a read.
Rating: 4
Summary: Really good for non-native writers
Comment: I often write papers in English, and this book really helps me to improve the quality of my writing.
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Title: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson ISBN: 0767908171 Publisher: Broadway Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson ISBN: 0380715430 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 01 September, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Schott's Original Miscellany by Ben Schott ISBN: 1582343497 Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Pub. Date: 04 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Made in America by Bill Bryson ISBN: 0380713810 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 01 March, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Bill Bryson's African Diary by BILL BRYSON ISBN: 0767915062 Publisher: Broadway Pub. Date: 03 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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