A. ParodyCritiques

A parody of the well written, highly readable Eats Shoots and Leaves this book basically consists of lists of grammatical errors, confusing English words and slang from various parts of the English-speaking world. George W. Bush gets an entire page for his grammatical errors and there are some other American politicians that are very heavily featured; but the book is obviously written by a Brit and Brits always feel that Americans are the biggest basterdizers of the English language. (Not that any of the errors are simply interpretation thing, they are really really wrong.)

A parody of the well written, highly readable Eats Shoots and Leaves this book basically consists of lists of grammatical errors, confusing English words and slang from various parts of the English-speaking world. George W. Bush gets an entire page for his grammatical errors and there are some other American politicians that are very heavily featured; but the book is obviously written by a Brit and Brits always feel that Americans are the biggest basterdizers of the English language. (Not that any of the errors are simply interpretation thing, they are really really wrong.)

A parody of the well written, highly readable Eats Shoots and Leaves this book basically consists of lists of grammatical errors, confusing English words and slang from various parts of the English-speaking world. George W. Bush gets an entire page for his grammatical errors and there are some other American politicians that are very heavily featured; but the book is obviously written by a Brit and Brits always feel that Americans are the biggest basterdizers of the English language. (Not that any of the errors are simply interpretation thing, they are really really wrong.)

A parody of the well written, highly readable Eats Shoots and Leaves this book basically consists of lists of grammatical errors, confusing English words and slang from various parts of the English-speaking world. George W. Bush gets an entire page for his grammatical errors and there are some other American politicians that are very heavily featured; but the book is obviously written by a Brit and Brits always feel that Americans are the biggest basterdizers of the English language. (Not that any of the errors are simply interpretation thing, they are really really wrong.)

This collection of random "facts" appears to be a weird combination of amusing-but-true and all-out-farcical. Unfortunately, I often wasn't sure which was which, and this made things much less funny than they could have been. Mildly entertaining at times but not worth reading cover to cover.

Not nearly as funny as it should have been, given the wealth of material provided by those who write about how English should be used, written, spoken, texted, etc. etc. etc. In fact, not really very funny at all. Maybe if I were English it would find it more amusing.½

Clever, but it would have been better had I not already seen most of the material in Anguished English and forwarded emails. Still, it was a nice little read and I enjoyed learning about the origins of certain cliches. Took me all of a day to read.

A book that can't make up its mind what it wants to be! After an introduction telling us that a language lives through its common usage (including mistakes), it then goes on to exemplify all the mistakes we commonly make. This descends into the kind of list-driven space filler often stocked for Christmas, but the book is redeemed by featuring choice quotes from the likes of Dan Quayle, George Bush, and Sam Goldwyn.
And if you love the English language, it is never boring, but I think I much preferred Lynne Truss's gently comic and chiding original.

I have the Portuguese version in Paperback

A very funny book on common mistakes made within the English language. I pride myself on my grammar but even I found that I wasn't as smart as I thought I was.
If you hate stupid people you'll love this book.½