The Barefoot Hiker
A Brief History of Time
Coming Out to Parents
Cosmos
Crazy English
Crazy English
by
Richard Lederer1989, Pocket Books, ISBN: 0-671-68906-1
In his previous volumes, master wordsmith Richard Lederer has
delighted and instructed with his lighthearted looks at our amusing and abusing
adventures with the English language. Now this "columnist
extraordinaire" (The New Yorker), this "one-man department of
linguistic ludicrousness"
(Chicago Tribune), this
"abbot of absurdity" (Boston Globe) delivers his tour de farce: a
rollicking tour through the oddities of the mother tongue.
In Crazy English, Dr. Lederer demonstrates that logic is
"conspicuously absent" from the "standard deviations" of
our language, an "open secret" that is anything but "old
news." In what other language, asks Lederer, do people drive on a parkway
and park in a driveway, or play at a recital and recite at a play? We may
speak and write English in a discombobulated manner, but it is unlikely we'll
ever do it -- or anything else -- in a combobulated manner.
If the crazy randomness, inconsistent spelling, and logic-boggling structure of
English prove the stuff on which Lederer's dreams are made, so does the
evolving accommodating capacity of the language. In this volume you will find
a list of names for phobias you didn't know you could have -- fears not only of
marriage, daylight, and being stared at, but also of mothers-in-law, the number
13, and peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. Here is a bird's eye
view of our beastly language (lame ducks who rule the roost in this rat-race of
a dog-eat-dog world) as well as a veritable banquet of mushrooming food
metaphors that you'll want to savor and relish; here are both the longest words
in our dictionaries and the shortest sentences that contain every letter of the
alphabet. Watch the re-nouned Farmer Pluribus try to rid his
"henhice" of "foxen," and meet the self-reflecting Doctor
Rotcod, destined to speak only in palindromes.
Full of stories, poems, interviews, quizzes, and other edifying challenges,
Crazy English is perfect laugh-out-loud entertainment, guaranteed to
keep you figuratively glued to your seat while you fall heels over head in love
with our loopy language.
Dove
Endangered Pleasures
Finding True Love in a Man-Eat-Man World
HAL's Legacy
The More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide
Mutant Message Down Under
Odyssey
Silicon Snake Oil