Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson

I really enjoyed reading Mother Tongue. Dating from 1990, 13 years ahead of Bryson's remarkable A Short History of Nearly Everything, this history of the English language shows off a formidable talent for non-fiction storytelling. From the very beginnings of an ancient language called Indo-European, right through to today's English with its illogical spelling and continual borrowing from other languages, Bryson traces out an intriguing story using a pleasant chatty style.

By liberally sprinkling factoids through the book, Bryson avoids any risk of his story growing dull. At the end of a passage on the Norman conquest, he drops in the interesting fact that George I of the eighteenth century spoke no English. After discussing at some length the creation of words by back-formation, he tells us of Robert Browning's horrible mistake regarding the word "twat". In the midst of a detailed chapter on dialects of English, he throws in a few jokes about "Strine", the dialect spoken across the Tasman. And so forth. It's a brilliant technique and it furnishes the reader with all sorts of useless information to bring out at parties.

Before reading Mother Tongue, I knew nothing at all about English history, how choking is fundamentally related to language, the trials of Japanese typists, or the difficulties of international branding. After reading it, I know a little something about each of these things, and many other subjects besides. For sheer density of information, Mother Tongue is an excellent book; for masterful handling of a truly fascinating story, it's amazing.