I’m feeling trapped between my (entirely personal, self-made) commitment to review (almost) all the media I consume, and how thoroughly behind I am at doing so. Hence, my all-in-one micro-review roundup, in which I give my impressions of everything on my “to review” list since last June. It may take me a couple more days to transfer these into the various review sites.
reviews: non-fiction
Blog entry
(Oops, I meant to post this a few days ago!)
This is another book that I read because “it fits in the waist pack I used for my Saturday morning bike ride.” Somewhat surprisingly, the main text was short enough to read over two croissants and a cup of coffee.
One of the peculiarities of my reading habits is that, while I’m often reading multiple things in parallel, I keep them sorted out mentally by reading in different formats and different contexts. The most eclectic reading context I currently have is “things I read over breakfast on my Saturday morning bike ride to Walnut Creek.” It has to be a book that will fit in my belt pack, which means either mass market paperback or the equivalent of a trade paperback (including hardback books of similar size). Mass market paperbacks are generally fiction, which means generally read them in ebook.
This isn’t so much a review of the book as a discussion of my reaction to it. For what that’s worth. I picked up Romancing the Beat because it was recommended on a podcast for authors who want to analyze what does or doesn’t work in their romance plots.
It isn’t necessary to be as much of a language geek as I am to love this book. McCulloch does an excellent job of applying linguistic analysis and principles to the ways the internet has used and changed language, and then explaining it all in an engaging and understandable way for the lay person. If you have ever had a “kids these days!” moment about online language, this book will explain to you why the things you’re complaining about are actually fascinating examples of larger trends in language change that have always been present.
Andrea, Bernadette. 2017. The Lives of Girls and Women from the Islamic World in Early Modern British Literature and Culture. University of Toronto Press, Toronto. ISBN 978-1-4875-0125-9
