Scan barcode
litwithlexie's review
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Bill Bryson never fails, I enjoyed this as it was very similar to Melvyn Bragg's Adventure in English documentary series that relates to the book, as it was informative but engaging as well
lachimolala981's review
4.0
I have thought a lot about the English language, and have learned a lot about it, but had never thought about its origins in this way before. Fascinating!
angelofthe0dd's review against another edition
4.0
I'm forever fascinated by the history of the English language. Bill Bryson presents a history of English from the perspective of other languages - in the sense that he juxtaposes parts of English that exist in other languages as well as the roots of English itself. In other words, it's not just a vanilla history book.
lit_chick's review
2.0
I'm usually a huge fan of Bill Bryson's writing, but wasn't interested in his book on the history of the English language since I studied it in college. What I did like about this adaptation was it was a 6 part series he did for the BBC and he interviewed all types of interesting scholars and there was lots of sound bites of people speaking different types of English. The sound quality was terrible though, and it got a little dry towards the end. I wonder if the book was better.