Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, by Melissa Mohr

Holy Sh*t

A Brief History of Swearing

(A History of the English Language in Four Letters)

Author: Melissa Mohr

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Publication Date: May 2, 2013

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Melissa Mohr's Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing has gotten a lot of positive response, but I'm going to go against the grain and say that I was underwhelmed. It amounted to a whole lot about not much. Leaving no tangent unexplored, Mohr spends much of her time telling us about biblical translations, theological debates, swearing oaths in court, the history of fashion, and Tourette's syndrome, but very little actually tracing the linguistic histories of the words she claims to be talking about. 

And while we're at it, the specific words she chooses seem, at best, arbitrary. She classifies all swearing into two categories: the religious (which she calls "the Holy") and the profane, specifically referring to sexuality or excrement (or, "the Shit"). She fits racial slurs clumsily into these categories. And though she claims that her conclusions are based on both British and American English, they are clearly meant for British readers. She occasionally references differences in American English, but it's clear that is for the benefit of her British readers and not the other way around (I had to look up what she meant by "why Americans have faucets in the bathroom and roosters in the farmyard" because I did not know about stopcocks, or whatever the British word is she was referencing).

I've read a lot of books about the history of language, and a fair number about the history of swearing, but this was by no means the most informative, nor the most entertaining. She clearly did a lot of research, but she didn't seem to know what to do with all the anecdotes she had accumulated. She sure did enjoy using those swear words though. You'd think that would have at least made the book more fun to read but...meh.

Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook, by Joe Yonan

Eat Your Vegetables:

Bold Recipes for the Single Cook

Author: Joe Yonan

Publisher: Ten Speed Press

Publication Date: August 6, 2013

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I love, love, love the tone of this book. It's slightly scolding, as you can glean from the title ("Eat your vegetables!") but in a good way. In the introduction the author basically comes right out and says that if you live alone you probably eat crap and you should knock it off. Stop saving the fancy dishes for the dinner parties you're never going to have and cook yourself a proper meal! So true. I don't even live alone and I can relate to that. Plus even those dinner parties (that almost never happen) can benefit from some fancy vegetable recipes. How many holiday meals have I attended in which the vegetables are a total afterthought? A side dish boiled and thrown on the plate? Too many!

Not all of the recipes in the book are for vegetables (or even just for side dishes), but a lot of them are fruit and veggie heavy because the author's right. I do eat like crap too much. Way too much.

Now to plan my next dinner party...NO WAIT, I'VE LEARNED NOTHING!

Brilliant Blunders From Darwin to Einstein: Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe, by Mario Livio

Brilliant Blunders

From Darwin to Einstein: Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe

Author: Mario Livio

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Publication Date: May 14, 2013

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Perhaps "blunders" is too strong a word for some of the mistakes Mario Livio talks about in this book, and I think "colossal mistakes" is way too far. Darwin's ideas about evolution, for instance, were not necessarily fully realized nor did they reflect all of the scientific knowledge we have today, but that's not exactly a "blunder." It's just the beginning of an idea that would change the course of scientific thought. But I guess that's the point of this book. A lot of so-called "blunders" actually result in scientific knowledge being furthered in new and unexpected directions.

As for the actual science in the book, it's a little beyond my university physics and chemistry classes in some places (or maybe it wasn't...university was kind of a long time ago), but I didn't find it all that difficult to follow. Mostly it was the story of what happened and why it was significant that was important, rather than the specifics of the science. Or, again, maybe it wasn't and I just wasn't following along with the details. I have been known to zone out a bit when things get too math-y. (It's why my job as a math tutor didn't go well.)

Simply Delicious Amish Cooking: Recipes and Stories From the Amish of Sarasota, Florida, by Sherry Gore

Simply Delicious Amish Cooking:

Recipes and stories from the Amish of Sarasota, Florida

Author: Sherry Gore 

Publisher: Zondervan

Publication Date: May 7, 2013

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Buy Now on Amazon.ca: spiral-bound (worth it for the convenience) kindle (worth it for the irony)

I'm not Amish but I'm a sucker for cookbooks. I figured an Amish cookbook would be awesome, filled with delicious buttery goodness and farm fresh recipes. But Simply Delicious Amish Cooking was a little different from what I expected.

On the plus side, it has a lot of great cookbook qualities. It has beautiful full-colour photos (awesome), a comprehensive index (helpful), and it's spiral bound (awesome AND helpful). It's a cookbook you could definitely use in your kitchen, letting it rest open on your counter while you follow along with the recipes.

On the other hand, the recipes themselves were...well...different from what I expected. I'm not sure what the Amish of Sarasota typically cook, but I was picturing old-fashioned "from scratch" recipes with basic farm ingredients. I was surprised by how many of the recipes called for things like processed cheese spread, Miracle Whip, Jell-O, marshmallows, canned fruits and vegetables, and even soda pop (hint: it's a lot). And there seem to be a disproportionate number of coleslaw and ambrosia recipes. (If you don't know what ambrosia is, it's that combination of canned fruit, marshmallows, gelatin and whipped cream that is favoured by seniors, particularly at church social events. A lot of the recipes in this book, though they go by different names, are variations of this horrible recipe.)

Many of the recipes reminded me of old cookbooks from the 1950s my mother used to have, back when people had just discovered preservatives and were all super excited about it. I figured an Amish cookbook would be old-fashioned, but I didn't think this is what they meant. Where were all the cake recipes that called for, like, 45 eggs? Instead there were things like "Gingerale Salad." What the--?

The Honest Toddler: A Child's Guide to Parenting, by Bunmi Laditan

The Honest Toddler: 

A Child's Guide to Parenting

Author: Bunmi Laditan

Publisher: Scribner

Publication Date: May 7, 2013

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I was going to write one of those "10 Books I'd Recommend for Mother's Day" posts but then I thought, as a mother, I'd reward myself for all my hard work by not making myself do one of those posts. It's my Mother's Day present to myself this year. I'm just not that great at those recommendation lists. Also, Mother's Day was two months ago. But there is one book I'd definitely recommend to fellow moms, particularly to fellow moms of toddlers: The Honest Toddler: A Child's Guide to Parenting. 

If you're not familiar with The Honest Toddler blog, you are really missing out. Told from the point of view of a two-year-old, the blog is filled with helpful and stern advice for parents like, "serving broken crackers makes you look unprofessional" and "date night tears families apart" as well as salient observations such as "funny how you can live inside someone's body for almost a year but a 1AM grilled cheese is taking it too far." It is BY FAR the funniest blog/twitter feed I have read this year (though The Bloggess is darn close).

Of all the blogs-turned-books released in recent years, this is the one I was most excited about. The post about lasagne being "pasta having the worst day of its life" left my partner and I in tears we were laughing so hard. I would have been perfectly happy if the whole book was just transcribed verbatim from the website. But it isn't exactly like that. A lot of the same material is there, but it's arranged into more traditional book categories, making it more like a parenting guide (except the advice is the exact opposite of most parenting books, and in fact it advises to just go ahead and throw out all those other parenting guides).

BOOK GIVEAWAY: Women, Sex, Power and Pleasure, by Evelyn Resh

My other blog, Cozy Little Book Journal, is going on a bit of a summer vacation but not before announcing a new BOOK GIVEAWAY! And this one is especially for the moms. Well, any women really, not just moms.

Enter to win a copy of Women, Sex, Power and Pleasure: Getting the Life (and Sex) You Want, by Evelyn Resh! You can read my review here. 

Contest ends September 30, 2013. Open to residents of U.S. and Canada over the age of 18. Winner will receive one paperback copy of the book by mail. Use the widget below to enter. Good luck!



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Happy Canada Day from The Bookish Elf!

Happy Canada Day Everyone!