Word Wizard
Super Bloopers, Rich Reflections, and Other Acts of Word Magic
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
After a multi-decade career of stimulating readers to appreciate and laugh at the glories and oddities of our English language, beloved language maven Richard Lederer has collected his very best and most popular pieces in Word Wizard. In this career-capping anthology the reader will find essays that enlighten, inspire, and tickle the funny bone.
From his hilarious bloopers to his hymns of praise to the English language, these essays are the brightest gems of a storied career. Word Wizard includes a new introduction, prefaces for each essay, sprightly verse, and material never before published in Leader's language books. With classic chapters such as "The World According to Student Bloopers," "English Is a Crazy Language," and "The Case for Short Words," and shiny new essays such as "The Way We Word" and "Add Wealth to Your Vocabulary," Word Wizard is sure to delight language lovers and Lederer fans everywhere.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This collection of light-hearted essays pokes, prods and pinches the English language, taunting and protecting it like an older brother might for his weakling sibling. Lederer, a language columnist and author of Anguished English, often demonstrates the point of his essays with the language used to write them (a diatribe against the use of "fadspeak" and cliches is composed almost exclusively of phrases from the maligned categories) and asserts that "if plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, I am one of the most flattered people alive," citing the prevalence of his columns-often sans byline-in chain emails. (Which may explain why some of this material seems stale.) His upbeat tone results in Pollyannaish prose, and some of his essays, such as the interview with the palindrome-spouting camel, are clever but fail to convey a message. There are a number of gems sprinkled throughout this book, and attentive readers will take away interesting language facts, new ideas for their own writing and even an inspired car-trip word game. Essays of note include a history of the English language, why single-syllable words are better than their multi-syllabic counterparts, and a wildly inaccurate portrayal of the history of the world cobbled together entirely from student essays. Though classified as a reference, this book works best as a casual reader for grammar geeks.
