I've read a few of Bill Bryson books before and always found them gently amusing, informing and irreverent. So I was looking forward to his look at the English language. Unfortunately the book wasn't quite what I was hoping for, to be fair to the author I think it was one of his earlier books so perhaps I was expecting a style that he hadn't yet developed from this book.
Having said that this is excellently researched and it would be churlish not to point out that its incredibly informative. There are glimpses of the sense of humour so apparent in his later books just not as much as I was expecting / hoping for.
All in all I did enjoy the book and had I not begun the book with my own set of preconceptions then I imagine I would have enjoyed it a good deal more....so in the end that's the lesson of this one. Judge a book on its merits and not you own set of preconceived ideas.....if only someone could come up with a pithy saying about how to judge a book.
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