So because of covid everyone, and I mean EVERYONE I know has been getting spam calls and text messaging. I decided to borrow a few books about insults and swearing just to joke around with these spammers. This one was at the top of the list. On pg 43 there is a graph called " Fucking Tenses". It has the tense, meaning and examples. And oh how I wish I had this in my Latin course in college! This book is easily 5 stars for all the laughs I got while reading this. ( )

Interesting book. This reminds me of the talk among sophomore English majors at college, talking about the etymology, grammar, usage and emphatic nature of curse words and phrases. Each word is examined, charted, diagrammed and the verb tenses explained. Some swear words were both verbs and nouns. The F word, for example, is demonstrated as simple past, simple present, past progressive, present progressive, past perfect, present perfect and future tenses. Fun, humor, and a little knowledge. Great for teenagers, and a good graduation gift for high schoolers who plan to be English majors, or grow up to be the town drunk. A fun book to have on your shelf. ( )

"How to Swear" is an example of the perfect kind of joke book. Clearly it isn't meant to be taken terribly seriously, but it maintains the perfect amount of etymology, history, and grammatical practice to be a genuinely useful and informative book. It's the most polite and clinical look into vulgar language I've ever seen, and if you like the concept of a book like this, I can nigh guarantee that you will like this rendition.
I'm normally not one to mention the physical printing of the book because it's the content that matters, but I'll make an exception here because this joke book about swearing managed to have the best presentation of any hard-cover book I've ever read. The color palette is tasteful, the binding is perfect, the spine is unyielding, the covers have the perfect hardness, and some pages have ink going to the very edge of a page in a way that's unusual, but satisfying.
The chapters, subsections, and graphs are well organized and the overall presentation is lovely. The humor is solid and the analysis is an appealing course in the savory meal that is this book. If the concept or genre is remotely interesting to you, there is no alternative. ( )

At first I thought this book was more of a dictionary/lexicon but as I continued through it I found the humor to be quite intriguing. While this book is not something I would normally be drawn to, I wanted to give it a try. It was okay and while I was hoping for more of a "here is when to swear and when not to swear" type of book, it was not too bad. Still I was hoping for more of a tutorial aspect which did not happen. ( )

The minimalistic design creates a visual delight to complement the coarseness of the content. The content itself could be written off as being "silly" but it's actually a very interesting linguistic study. Each swear has its own chapter and a breakdown of how it functions in different parts of speech, as well as explaining how modifiers change the meaning (my favorite being animal modifiers to "shit": ie "dog shit" means something is no good, "ape shit" conveying crazed anger, etc).

Overall, a delight to read and would recommend to those who appreciate the nuances of language. ( )