A fun and clever read. I've read plenty of books on the English language and the vagaries of our spelling. As far as English spelling is concerned, this didn't really go into detail like some of the other books and I knew most of what was in this book.

That being said, the author is fun to read and the anecdotes were great. Some sections of the book even merited being retold to my husband. I'm also now going to read the novel Trainspotting. I didn't realize how much of a Scottish accent you could give yourself by reading the words in that book the way they are spelled. I'm also going to read the book "The Killer's Guide to Iceland".

If you're interested in a quick, fun, entertaining looks at English spelling, this book is great. If you want something scholarly and in-depth, maybe look elsewhere. ( )

Less interesting than I expected, but mainly because I already knew a lot of it. ( )

Interesting stuff about how the English language came to be. ( )

Histories of writing/spelling/dictionaries &c. are a particular interest of mine, so I was delighted to see James Essinger's Spellbound: The Surprising Origins and Astonishing Secrets of English Spelling (Delta, 2007) come across the transom. Essinger's enthusiasm for spelling and its idiosyncracies is abundantly evident from the get-go, and this book is a reasonably interesting general introduction to the history of English and some of the language's oddities. However, Essinger's desire to target this book at a 'general audience' got in its way, I think - his enthusiasm has a tendency to run toward the goofy (it's very hard to take seriously someone who uses a quote from "Gladiator" as an epigram, and who repeatedly refers to the "magic" of spelling as if it were somehow conjured up by some benevolent - or malevolent, depending on your inclinations - wizard somewhere).

Essinger's account of the development of English as a language - both spoken and written - is basic but fairly informative. He throws in some "fun facts" about why certain words are spelled as they are, as well as some trivia about a few of the best-known English dictionaries. I was struck, though, but how many of his 'conclusions' were preceded by "my guess is" or one of its equivalents ... again, not exactly the sort of thing to inspire confidence.

Readable and breezy this book may be - but it's difficult to take it with more than a grain of salt. References would have helped, as would a more complete bibliography. Sometimes more than an author's affinity for a subject is required to make a good book.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2007/05/book-review-spellbound.html ( )