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The Horologicon: A Day's Jaunt Through The Lost Words Of The English Language (2012)

by Mark Forsyth(Favorite Author)

3.95 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1848314159 (ISBN13: 9781848314153)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Icon Books

review 1: While I really enjoyed the Etymologicon because it was a fresh and novel concept that taught me the meaning and connections between a variety of words, this book was pretty well terrible. My husband, who also enjoyed his first book, described this as "the OED with a story clumsily attached." I couldn't agree more. While I remember even today some of the fun derivation stories from the Etymologicon, I couldn't remember new words from this a page after I read them. It was too many words, none of which were offered in a memorable way. It was like looking at a spelling list and then, 30 seconds later, being asked to recall all the words on the list. It's impossible and the knowledge gained becomes nil. While his humor was still there, the "day in your life" format was just not... more the best concept. Here's fingers crossed for Etymologicon 2!!!
review 2: I was agreeably surprised once I've read this book, it is not at all as I expected. M. Forsyth explains unknown words of the English vocabulary that are forgotten or fun to use. I think it was a very good idea to use a temporal marker for every chapter, and thus that explains the title. It starts from sunrise to midnight with very funny chapters like the one where you return to work, other were- at least for me, less interesting like the one on drinking alcohol. The transitions between the words are flowing, there is no abrupt stops in the narrative from one word to another yet sometimes I couldn't help but feel that he used the same methods to switch from one word to another. I thought overall this book is very interesting, witty and funny. less

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