Birthdays and Birthmonths: Book A

Since roughly 90% of the people in my (Ms. Anderson's) life were born in June, I thought it would be fun to do a task related to birthdays!

For your first book, pick out your birthday month from this list and read a NONFICTION book about that topic.
...
December: History of Language (EXAMPLE: Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World)

For your second book, find out what day of the week on which you were born (if you don't know already) and read a FICTION book from that genre.
...Tuesday: Alternate History (EXAMPLE: The Yiddish Policemen's Union)
...
Note: The books are two distinct categories, so therefore do not need to be related at all.

I truncated the task for this one because just listing out all that it entailed would be a substantial post! I just left Tuesday in December since that is what applied to me, but if you are interested in seeing what you would have had to read, check it out over here.

The Mother Tongue: English and How it got that way by Bill Bryson

When I read the description of this book it sounded really intresting:

The author of the acclaimed The Lost Continent now steers us through the quirks and byways of the English language. We learn why island, freight, and colonel are spelled in such unphonetic ways, why four has a u in it but forty doesn't, plus bizarre and enlightening facts about some of the patriarchs of this peculiar language

"Wow," I thought "I've always wondered this! Why is there that u in four? Tell me oh non-fiction book of research!"

There were times when this book was really interesting. Certain chapters made me nod my head in wonder, excited that I would be able to answer that Jeopardy question correctly. But other times, though the information slightly interesting, I felt cheated. You know that forty four thing? Well it pretty much was answered "I dont know. It just developed that way"

What?

Why even tease me, book! Overall though, it was interesting and it takes a lot of a non-fiction book to keep me with it. So I gave it three stars.