Bill Bryson: Made in America

I love Bill Bryson and I have to say that this was probably one of his best. Made in America is a big one but it's worth the read. Starting with the arrival of the Spanish and Western Europeans in America it navigates through the history of American English. It's full of cute anecdotes, reevaluation of some commonly held myths about the founding of America and basically, where words come from. I'm an amateur etymologist and so of course, I found this book fascinating and at times, very funny (like most of Bryson's work). I would highly recommend this book as it's a light but interesting jaunt through American history with a twist. Please don't confuse the word light however with "shirt". The book is long - 434 pages long. If it were a novel I wouldn't find 424 pages too long but in this case I felt like I was learning so much and encountering so many interesting facts that I wanted to share with other that at times I felt like I had to play catch up with the book. Does that make sense?

The only bad thing I will say about this book is that the ending was weak. Very weak. It was annoying to read this whole thing only to have it run out of things to say at the end. Rather than closing the loop and bringing the book back around to the evolution of language and where we are headed in modern day English, Bryson sort of just pooped out. It wouldn't have been a difficult book to end in my opinion so I was frustrated when I got to the end of what was a long journey only to find that the author had left me alone.