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Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story
How on Earth did we fix upon our twenty-six letters, what do they really mean, and how did we come to write them down in the first place? Michael Rosen takes you on an unforgettable adventure through the history of the alphabet in twenty-six vivid chapters, fizzing with personal anecdotes and fascinating facts. Starting with the mysterious Phoenicians and how sounds first came to be written down, he races on to show how nonsense poems work, pins down the strange story of OK, traces our five lost letters and tackles the tyranny of spelling, among many many other things. His heroes of the alphabet range from Edward Lear to Phyllis Pearsall (the inventor of the A-Z), and from the two scribes of Beowulf to rappers. Each chapter takes on a different subject - whether it's codes, umlauts or the writing of dictionaries. Rosen's enthusiasm for letters positively leaps off the page, whether it's the story of his life told through the typewriters he's owned or a chapter on jokes written in a string of gags and word games. This is the book for anyone who's ever wondered why Hawaiian only has a thirteen-letter alphabet or how exactly to write down the sound of a wild raspberry.
447 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
125 people are currently reading
1302 people want to read
About the author
Michael Rosen
581 books540 followersMichael Rosen, a recent British Children’s Laureate, has written many acclaimed books for children, including WE'RE GOING ON A BEAR HUNT, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, and I’M NUMBER ONE and THIS IS OUR HOUSE, both illustrated by Bob Graham. Michael Rosen lives in London.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 131 reviews
December 19, 2017
Interesting, erudite, entertaining at the time. But on thinking back there was a lot of little bits of information put together well but not really of any depth. My favourite book right now by Michael Rosen is Bananas In My Ears. The story goes that the family are having breakfast when the son comes down and can't hear anyone because he has bananas stuck in his ears. (The book reduces me to tears every time. It doesn't actually make any sense, but then neither do I at times.)
I have earplugs stuck in my ears because the effing bitch upstairs has a 6000 kW generator out on her balcony right above me and she keeps it going all night. Everyone else turns theirs off at night. This awful noise might be why I've forgotten quite a bit about the book and not because it was either unmemorable or is an age-related brain-softening. I read the book before Irma when I had current, I hope to have current again someday soon.
As far as I remember it was entertaining but nothing like as much as his kids' poetry books.
Interesting information presented in a fairly lighthearted tone. Two things I learned so far: The Hebrew alphabet (first letter is alpha second is bet) isn't original at all but is actually Phoenician. That means I would be able to read Phoenician too. Secondly, Caesar was pronounced Ky Czar by the Romans. So the Czar went to Russia with unchanged pronounciation and meaning.
I have earplugs stuck in my ears because the effing bitch upstairs has a 6000 kW generator out on her balcony right above me and she keeps it going all night. Everyone else turns theirs off at night. This awful noise might be why I've forgotten quite a bit about the book and not because it was either unmemorable or is an age-related brain-softening. I read the book before Irma when I had current, I hope to have current again someday soon.
As far as I remember it was entertaining but nothing like as much as his kids' poetry books.
Interesting information presented in a fairly lighthearted tone. Two things I learned so far: The Hebrew alphabet (first letter is alpha second is bet) isn't original at all but is actually Phoenician. That means I would be able to read Phoenician too. Secondly, Caesar was pronounced Ky Czar by the Romans. So the Czar went to Russia with unchanged pronounciation and meaning.
March 26, 2015
This is a story about letters; which make words; which make stories.
Split into 26 chapters, Rosen delves into the history of each letter, from their very earliest history and origins, the way that is should be pronounced, or the sounds that it makes in certain words, including all the oddities. Following this introduction to each letter, he then has an essay on a subject connected with that letter. Some time these are closely connected, for example A is about the alphabet, and other times they are not very closely linked, L is on LSD.
That said, it is full of fascinating facts, anecdotes and stories about these 26 strange symbols that we use data in and day out when talking, writing and reading. Even thought it is 400 pages long it really is quick to read, and really enjoyable. There are two things that I felt that could have improved it, one would be to show the graphical evolution of each of the letters, and also more on letters that have vanished from our current alphabet like æ. Was an interesting book on the building books of our language.
I don't normally include an image with my reviews, but I though that this one was suitable and mildly amusing:
Split into 26 chapters, Rosen delves into the history of each letter, from their very earliest history and origins, the way that is should be pronounced, or the sounds that it makes in certain words, including all the oddities. Following this introduction to each letter, he then has an essay on a subject connected with that letter. Some time these are closely connected, for example A is about the alphabet, and other times they are not very closely linked, L is on LSD.
That said, it is full of fascinating facts, anecdotes and stories about these 26 strange symbols that we use data in and day out when talking, writing and reading. Even thought it is 400 pages long it really is quick to read, and really enjoyable. There are two things that I felt that could have improved it, one would be to show the graphical evolution of each of the letters, and also more on letters that have vanished from our current alphabet like æ. Was an interesting book on the building books of our language.
I don't normally include an image with my reviews, but I though that this one was suitable and mildly amusing:
May 12, 2017
I was so dissapointed with this book, I love word play, the history of the English language and origins of words and sayings but this seemed to ramble on without breaks from one subject to the next. Perhaps this would have been more appealing as a facts with nice illustrations, photographs of artifacts style book, I found that I was skimming through many pages.
In answer to Michael Rosens question, yes doctors really do use the abbreviation N.F.N on patient's medical records, meaning Normal for Norfolk, meaning someone they consider stupid because they haven't had the same opportunities as they have had. I know this is regularly used along with even more derogatory abbreviations.
In answer to Michael Rosens question, yes doctors really do use the abbreviation N.F.N on patient's medical records, meaning Normal for Norfolk, meaning someone they consider stupid because they haven't had the same opportunities as they have had. I know this is regularly used along with even more derogatory abbreviations.
June 17, 2023
I've loved many of the author's children's books, and I love word-play, history of language, that sort of thing. So I had hopes for this....
So far, 1/2-way through B, it's been trivial and self-indulgent in turn. Really not sure that it would have gotten published without Rosen's reputation. But we'll see, as I won't stop this early!
...
Ok, I'm in G. And I'm thinking this would be a lot more fun as an audiobook.
...
Q. Getting more interesting. A bit frustrating sometimes with the British slang... it seems almost as if Rosen didn't want Americans (or Canadians, or Australians...) to read it as his voice addresses Brits so distinctly and talks about 'other English speakers' kind of thing. But I just skip the little bits I don't understand and it's fine. (I admit, I found later chapters in which Rosen did use qualifiers like 'in my accent.')
Because I'm going to remember almost nothing anyway. It's not sticky information that slots into my worldview, but rather it truly is trivia, mostly. Oh well.
....
OK done. Off hand, I remember that Rosen says we can spell 'okay' any way we want to. And that there were some passages that remind me that I do still want to keep reading what I can find by the author. But that's about it. So, 2.5 stars rounded down. Let's see what I marked with bookdarts.
maybe want to read: a little satire called "Poor Letter H, its uses and abuses" by the Hon. Henry H, but it's not listed here nor on project gutenberg so probably not... Also 'Cargoes' by John Masefield for the work 'quinquireme.'... also Gerard Manley Hopkins for sprung rhythm, for poems that sound like 'play, jazz, experiment, and impro.'
want to research: the Voynich manuscript, which Rosen has opined is "a carefully constructed absurdist joke," a hoax, a parody aimed at those of the Renaissance who seemed to be too set on investigating and defining the world. "It doesn't encode crucial knowledge which will enagle someone to exploit resources, or secure great wealth, which in turn will help him to enslave thousands in order to go on exploiting those resources and running governments.
want to play: some of the games from the Oulipo Olympics, and also a game he doesn't name but which I'll call "Zing" as that's a word he uses to describe the end, especially if you can say it quickly so your listener doesn't quite catch what's happening:
shampoo
hampoo
ampoo
mpoo (say: empoo)
poo
oo
o (say: oh!)
Want to try something a bit like geocaching, maybe, called derive (with a mark over the 'e'), a sort of psychogeography, a way of travelling (usually on foot) by whatever guidelines you choose.
Edward Lear, the nonsense poet, had an interesting life. Normally I don't want to know about authors, only about their work, but these data seem relevant to an appreciation of his work. "He was the twentieth of twenty-one children, the son of a stockbroker who went bust. He suffered from epilepsy and depression all his life, [personifying one as]... the 'Demon' and the other the 'Morbids.'"
So far, 1/2-way through B, it's been trivial and self-indulgent in turn. Really not sure that it would have gotten published without Rosen's reputation. But we'll see, as I won't stop this early!
...
Ok, I'm in G. And I'm thinking this would be a lot more fun as an audiobook.
...
Q. Getting more interesting. A bit frustrating sometimes with the British slang... it seems almost as if Rosen didn't want Americans (or Canadians, or Australians...) to read it as his voice addresses Brits so distinctly and talks about 'other English speakers' kind of thing. But I just skip the little bits I don't understand and it's fine. (I admit, I found later chapters in which Rosen did use qualifiers like 'in my accent.')
Because I'm going to remember almost nothing anyway. It's not sticky information that slots into my worldview, but rather it truly is trivia, mostly. Oh well.
....
OK done. Off hand, I remember that Rosen says we can spell 'okay' any way we want to. And that there were some passages that remind me that I do still want to keep reading what I can find by the author. But that's about it. So, 2.5 stars rounded down. Let's see what I marked with bookdarts.
maybe want to read: a little satire called "Poor Letter H, its uses and abuses" by the Hon. Henry H, but it's not listed here nor on project gutenberg so probably not... Also 'Cargoes' by John Masefield for the work 'quinquireme.'... also Gerard Manley Hopkins for sprung rhythm, for poems that sound like 'play, jazz, experiment, and impro.'
want to research: the Voynich manuscript, which Rosen has opined is "a carefully constructed absurdist joke," a hoax, a parody aimed at those of the Renaissance who seemed to be too set on investigating and defining the world. "It doesn't encode crucial knowledge which will enagle someone to exploit resources, or secure great wealth, which in turn will help him to enslave thousands in order to go on exploiting those resources and running governments.
want to play: some of the games from the Oulipo Olympics, and also a game he doesn't name but which I'll call "Zing" as that's a word he uses to describe the end, especially if you can say it quickly so your listener doesn't quite catch what's happening:
shampoo
hampoo
ampoo
mpoo (say: empoo)
poo
oo
o (say: oh!)
Want to try something a bit like geocaching, maybe, called derive (with a mark over the 'e'), a sort of psychogeography, a way of travelling (usually on foot) by whatever guidelines you choose.
Edward Lear, the nonsense poet, had an interesting life. Normally I don't want to know about authors, only about their work, but these data seem relevant to an appreciation of his work. "He was the twentieth of twenty-one children, the son of a stockbroker who went bust. He suffered from epilepsy and depression all his life, [personifying one as]... the 'Demon' and the other the 'Morbids.'"
November 18, 2013
I heard the author Michael Rosen talking on the radio about his new book Alphabetical. He told how the capital letter A turned upside down looked like a stylised ox's head with two horns - and low and behold, this letter used to be called aleph, the word in ancient Semitic languages for an ox. I was hooked.
Along the way Rosen brings in so many stories. A lot of this is done by a cunning wheeze in the structure. The book is arranged alphabetically (how else?) and for each letter starts with a short section on the letter itself, its origins and its uses in English, then follows with a longer section that has a theme. So, for instance, D is for disappeared letters and V is for Vikings. We then get a meandering exploration of that theme - sometimes with many little deviations along the way, but always tying back to the alphabet and writing.
It ought to work brilliantly, and in many ways it does, but I was slightly put off by the chunkiness of the book - over 400 pages - and combined with the alphabetic approach, it is difficult not to occasionally have that sense of 'I must plough on to the end' rather than 'I'm enjoying it'. It's that same sense I might get when someone has kindly bought me, say, an encyclopaedia of science fiction and I feel I must my work my way through it whatever. On the whole it does work, but I couldn't help but feel it might have been better if Rosen had let go of the rather obvious strictures of the alphabet for the book's structure. I think there's an interesting comparison with a couple of books I reviewed once about the periodic table. The one that worked best wove the subject matter into a series of stories with no particular table-related structure. The other, more plodding one worked through, period by period.
However, there is lots to enjoy, from Rosen's rant against the obsessive use of the systematic synthetic phonics approach in teaching reading these days to his really interesting observations on the importance of Pitman's shorthand and even his affection for the A to Z (or his knowledge of the absence of the London E19 district). It's a bit like being trapped in a lift with Stephen Fry when he's playing QI host. This is the QI of letters and words.
If you are interested in writing and words - or struggling for a present idea for someone who is - this could be an ideal buy.
Along the way Rosen brings in so many stories. A lot of this is done by a cunning wheeze in the structure. The book is arranged alphabetically (how else?) and for each letter starts with a short section on the letter itself, its origins and its uses in English, then follows with a longer section that has a theme. So, for instance, D is for disappeared letters and V is for Vikings. We then get a meandering exploration of that theme - sometimes with many little deviations along the way, but always tying back to the alphabet and writing.
It ought to work brilliantly, and in many ways it does, but I was slightly put off by the chunkiness of the book - over 400 pages - and combined with the alphabetic approach, it is difficult not to occasionally have that sense of 'I must plough on to the end' rather than 'I'm enjoying it'. It's that same sense I might get when someone has kindly bought me, say, an encyclopaedia of science fiction and I feel I must my work my way through it whatever. On the whole it does work, but I couldn't help but feel it might have been better if Rosen had let go of the rather obvious strictures of the alphabet for the book's structure. I think there's an interesting comparison with a couple of books I reviewed once about the periodic table. The one that worked best wove the subject matter into a series of stories with no particular table-related structure. The other, more plodding one worked through, period by period.
However, there is lots to enjoy, from Rosen's rant against the obsessive use of the systematic synthetic phonics approach in teaching reading these days to his really interesting observations on the importance of Pitman's shorthand and even his affection for the A to Z (or his knowledge of the absence of the London E19 district). It's a bit like being trapped in a lift with Stephen Fry when he's playing QI host. This is the QI of letters and words.
If you are interested in writing and words - or struggling for a present idea for someone who is - this could be an ideal buy.
August 16, 2014
This book tells the 'story' of each letter of the alphabet. This story consists of its history, its pronunciation, and then an associated essay on some aspect of language (e.g. F is for fonts). This format can seem a bit repetitive at times, so I found this book worked best reading one or two letter stories at each sitting.
There are some fascinating facts here, historical and linguistic, and I especially enjoyed learning the background to developments such as Braille and Morse Code. The sheer range of topics covered is impressive and thought provoking. Rosen's style is impish and engaging, the only exception being when he occasionally gets on his soap box and becomes a bit political. Thankfully this isn't too often and the tone generally stays informative but not dull.
One minor criticism - it would have helped to have pictures of the letters as they appeared in their evolution - the descriptions are sometimes hard to follow.
Overall, very enjoyable and would appeal to those who are interested in the written and spoken language, its history and its function.
There are some fascinating facts here, historical and linguistic, and I especially enjoyed learning the background to developments such as Braille and Morse Code. The sheer range of topics covered is impressive and thought provoking. Rosen's style is impish and engaging, the only exception being when he occasionally gets on his soap box and becomes a bit political. Thankfully this isn't too often and the tone generally stays informative but not dull.
One minor criticism - it would have helped to have pictures of the letters as they appeared in their evolution - the descriptions are sometimes hard to follow.
Overall, very enjoyable and would appeal to those who are interested in the written and spoken language, its history and its function.
March 13, 2019
I may be the only person in the world who loves the history of the English language, writing and text and yet gave up on this book. To be honest, it was a little too personal for me. Michael Rosen seems like a lovely man, and I have no doubt that's why his radio appearances are so popular, but I didn't really want to hear about his experiences and thoughts evoked by each letter of the alphabet. I honestly just wanted more history. A book that did this perfectly for me was Shady Characters The Secret Life of Punctuation Symbols Other Typographical Marks. It had history, a fair sense of fun that didn't overshadow the text, and ample pictures, which are SO important to textual critic fanatics like me.
Again, this book might work for some, but I didn't love it.
Recommended to: a reader of book history who doesn't like textual criticism, or a casual book lover with a vague interest in history, or Michael Rosen aficionados.
Again, this book might work for some, but I didn't love it.
Recommended to: a reader of book history who doesn't like textual criticism, or a casual book lover with a vague interest in history, or Michael Rosen aficionados.
November 26, 2021
The English alphabet, its origins, and uses.
Each letter has its own chapter and begins with a very brief history (or speculation) about its origins, forms, and meaning, then it covers pronunciation of the letter itself and the ways it's pronounced as part of a word. But save for a spread of the Phoenician and Greek alphabets, there are no pictures of the early forms of the letters and you're forced to rely on Rosen's poor descriptions in the text. He does a better job of describing sounds, differentiating between short or long, hard or soft, and giving multiple examples of each sound.
Following that is an essay for each letter, though they're only tangentially related, if at all, to the letter itself: A is for Alphabet, B is for Battledore, C is for Ciphers. I preferred the factual essays, like what makes an alphabet an alphabet, the discarded letters that litter our past (hello ye olde Þ), and how the modern Korean alphabet was constructed. The personal essays are rambling and filled with the opinions of an unknown-to-me old white British man, and I found them of little interest.
Rosen is addressing a British audience here and makes no effort to include the non-British, and sometimes lost me entirely, which is fine. But he also makes a lot of generalizations about speech in the US. This is a big place and we don't all speak the same. Whether or not calling George W. Bush "Dubya" suggests "a kind of baby-talk" (his take) or is simply a reflection—or exaggeration—of the way people in that region say the letter W (I thought this was obvious?) is a matter of perspective, but no matter where you're from the HOMES mnemonic to remember the Great Lakes does not, as he claims, list them from west to east. That is not a thing that is happening. Look at a map.
That's not all he gets wrong. He gives two different versions of what the first telegram text was, so I did a little research and it turns out he got the date wrong for one of them. On May 24, 1844, Samuel F. B. Morse dispatched the first telegraphic message over an experimental line from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore. The message was: WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT? But Rosen gives the date as January 11, 1838.
January 11, 1838 was the day Morse sent "A patient waiter is no loser" over two miles of wire at Speedwell Ironworks in Morristown, New Jersey. That was the first-ever public demonstration of the telegraph, but the message literally never left the building. Even if Rosen had gotten the dates correct, he didn't do an adequate job of explaining the relevance of these two landmark events.
He also calls the adze "now-extinct" except you can buy one on Amazon for fuck's sake.
It maybe now will not surprise you to learn there are few references in the text, no notes citing sources, and no bibliography, only a list titled "Further Reading." Rosen is a presenter on BBC Radio 4, and maybe this was meant to be a light-hearted look at our letters and language for his fans (?), but I found it neither entertaining nor enlightening, and it's definitely not exact.
Contains: Eye trauma in the essay for S. Gender presented as binary in X.
Each letter has its own chapter and begins with a very brief history (or speculation) about its origins, forms, and meaning, then it covers pronunciation of the letter itself and the ways it's pronounced as part of a word. But save for a spread of the Phoenician and Greek alphabets, there are no pictures of the early forms of the letters and you're forced to rely on Rosen's poor descriptions in the text. He does a better job of describing sounds, differentiating between short or long, hard or soft, and giving multiple examples of each sound.
Following that is an essay for each letter, though they're only tangentially related, if at all, to the letter itself: A is for Alphabet, B is for Battledore, C is for Ciphers. I preferred the factual essays, like what makes an alphabet an alphabet, the discarded letters that litter our past (hello ye olde Þ), and how the modern Korean alphabet was constructed. The personal essays are rambling and filled with the opinions of an unknown-to-me old white British man, and I found them of little interest.
Rosen is addressing a British audience here and makes no effort to include the non-British, and sometimes lost me entirely, which is fine. But he also makes a lot of generalizations about speech in the US. This is a big place and we don't all speak the same. Whether or not calling George W. Bush "Dubya" suggests "a kind of baby-talk" (his take) or is simply a reflection—or exaggeration—of the way people in that region say the letter W (I thought this was obvious?) is a matter of perspective, but no matter where you're from the HOMES mnemonic to remember the Great Lakes does not, as he claims, list them from west to east. That is not a thing that is happening. Look at a map.
That's not all he gets wrong. He gives two different versions of what the first telegram text was, so I did a little research and it turns out he got the date wrong for one of them. On May 24, 1844, Samuel F. B. Morse dispatched the first telegraphic message over an experimental line from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore. The message was: WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT? But Rosen gives the date as January 11, 1838.
January 11, 1838 was the day Morse sent "A patient waiter is no loser" over two miles of wire at Speedwell Ironworks in Morristown, New Jersey. That was the first-ever public demonstration of the telegraph, but the message literally never left the building. Even if Rosen had gotten the dates correct, he didn't do an adequate job of explaining the relevance of these two landmark events.
He also calls the adze "now-extinct" except you can buy one on Amazon for fuck's sake.
It maybe now will not surprise you to learn there are few references in the text, no notes citing sources, and no bibliography, only a list titled "Further Reading." Rosen is a presenter on BBC Radio 4, and maybe this was meant to be a light-hearted look at our letters and language for his fans (?), but I found it neither entertaining nor enlightening, and it's definitely not exact.
Contains: Eye trauma in the essay for S. Gender presented as binary in X.
January 30, 2018
I guess that I could call myself a professional linguist, or at least I have been in past lives. I’m a total sucker for anything about language history, especially English which is my native tongue. I love hearing about word origins, so stories about letter origins is a bit like cells dividing.
Living in a country that speaks a language other than English and where almost everyone is trying to learn my language, it’s nice to be able to give people detailed reasons as to why English is such a fucking train wreck to learn. Why do will spell it “night” instead of “nite,” for instance?
Having studied Arabic and Modern Greek extensively, all of this letter history is just a blast for me. I can’t get enough of it. Of course, I have a brain like a sieve and I’ll forget about 99% of the fun facts laid out here in about two days, but it was fun while it lasted and I’ll just have to read it again some day soon.
Living in a country that speaks a language other than English and where almost everyone is trying to learn my language, it’s nice to be able to give people detailed reasons as to why English is such a fucking train wreck to learn. Why do will spell it “night” instead of “nite,” for instance?
Having studied Arabic and Modern Greek extensively, all of this letter history is just a blast for me. I can’t get enough of it. Of course, I have a brain like a sieve and I’ll forget about 99% of the fun facts laid out here in about two days, but it was fun while it lasted and I’ll just have to read it again some day soon.
July 9, 2015
Twenty-six entries each starting with a brief overview of a letter of the alphabet (historical background, phonetics, etc.), used as a jumping off point for a digression of a specific linguistic (for lack of a better term) aspect. Some were (at least mildly) interesting, while others (often having to do with the author's own life) weren't. Overall, the book worked to pass time when I needed to fill short periods with background noise. Rosen's reading was okay as author-narrated books go, but I might've preferred to skim the print book I think if I had to go back and decide again.
One point that irritated me more as the book went on was the incredibly U. K. centric focus. I accept that Rosen is English himself, but as most folks for whom English is their primary language are NOT British, the short shrift he gives in passing to that fact seemed a bit ... patronizing - with a "zee"!
One point that irritated me more as the book went on was the incredibly U. K. centric focus. I accept that Rosen is English himself, but as most folks for whom English is their primary language are NOT British, the short shrift he gives in passing to that fact seemed a bit ... patronizing - with a "zee"!
Read
February 16, 2015Fun and interesting but I don't know how much was reliable. Rosen needs a fact-checker and a copy-editor. I don't know if Britons do the "hokey-cokey" but I do know Usans don't do the "cokey-cokey." (162) HOMES is a mnemonic for the American Great Lakes but not for their order from upstream to down. (198) "T" is not the second-most common word in even British English; obviously he means "letter." (311). Noah Webster did indeed reverse the "re" in "theatre" but he didn't reverse the "ce" of "defence." (358)
April 18, 2015
A series of lectures on the history of letters, signs, symbols, writing, spelling, printing, rhymes and related literary topics. I found it something of a struggle to read. Each entry begins with a description of how a letter of our alphabet, and its pronunciation, has changed through written history--the former a rather tedious exercise in describing visual changes that would have been much improved by illustrations; the latter an extended string of examples that as a model goes from amusing to pedantic after about "C" or "D".
The ensuing essays likewise suffer from their lack of pictures, since much of the subject matter is visual in nature. When it's not, he piles example upon example, as if he's been collecting them for many years and insists on dumping his whole card file into the narrative. Also, over the course of one after another after another the entries acquired to me a certain sameness of style or tone. Maybe I shouldn't have gone for the straight run, but read the chapters piecemeal?
Or, perhaps I was just the wrong reader, though I do love most of Rosen's other books, and think no public library collection up to snuff that doesn't include several. Nonetheless, I will still recommend Oscar Ogg's ancient 26 LETTERS as the best general intro to the English alphabet.
The ensuing essays likewise suffer from their lack of pictures, since much of the subject matter is visual in nature. When it's not, he piles example upon example, as if he's been collecting them for many years and insists on dumping his whole card file into the narrative. Also, over the course of one after another after another the entries acquired to me a certain sameness of style or tone. Maybe I shouldn't have gone for the straight run, but read the chapters piecemeal?
Or, perhaps I was just the wrong reader, though I do love most of Rosen's other books, and think no public library collection up to snuff that doesn't include several. Nonetheless, I will still recommend Oscar Ogg's ancient 26 LETTERS as the best general intro to the English alphabet.
February 15, 2021
You don't always know what you're going to get with a book like Alphabetical, which purports to tell the etymology and cultural significance of every letter of "The Alphabet" (which isn't the ONLY alphabet, Rosen is quick to point out, but it is the one that most Western speakers and writers refer to at THE alphabet). Is it going to be light and breezy with a breadth of witticisms and a dearth of facts, or will it be so stuck in the mud of history that it doesn't let the concepts breathe? I've lived through both sorts of books and while I prefer the former, I'm always searching for the Bill Bryson medium.
Alphabetical mostly hits that medium. He goes through every letter of the alphabet, talks about why the letter name is pronounced (this is the quirky fun etymological stuff I crave; why is A pronounced AYE, and why the heck is it called a W if it's obviously a double v?), and gives us a pretty thorough overview of how the letter has been used over the years and centuries. In each chapter, we also get a tangent that amounts to a sub-chapter, discussing an aspect of culture we wouldn't have without these letters (like the histories of the word "okay," or why and how ZIP codes happened) that are sometimes only tangentially related to the letter history but are fascinating nonetheless.
Along the way, Rosen takes us into his personal history of letters, a recurring motif that continually remains charming because he doesn't bog down. In fact, none of this book bogs down. If you're starting to worry if the chapter about codes and ciphers is getting too in the weeds, just wait; we're going to wipe the whole slate clean and get into D any second.
This book, like many overviews, may inspire more than satisfy ... which I believe is its purpose. We get some tantalizing chunks of history - the whole section on the Voynich Manuscript, which might be a hoax springs to mind - and he leaves it up to the reader to go searching the topic further. If an overview of the history of the alphabet is all you want, this book will charm and delight (and the audiobook is read by the author, which is even more of a delight; if you're American, you just have to get used to hearing "zed" a lot). Recommended; now I want more.
Alphabetical mostly hits that medium. He goes through every letter of the alphabet, talks about why the letter name is pronounced (this is the quirky fun etymological stuff I crave; why is A pronounced AYE, and why the heck is it called a W if it's obviously a double v?), and gives us a pretty thorough overview of how the letter has been used over the years and centuries. In each chapter, we also get a tangent that amounts to a sub-chapter, discussing an aspect of culture we wouldn't have without these letters (like the histories of the word "okay," or why and how ZIP codes happened) that are sometimes only tangentially related to the letter history but are fascinating nonetheless.
Along the way, Rosen takes us into his personal history of letters, a recurring motif that continually remains charming because he doesn't bog down. In fact, none of this book bogs down. If you're starting to worry if the chapter about codes and ciphers is getting too in the weeds, just wait; we're going to wipe the whole slate clean and get into D any second.
This book, like many overviews, may inspire more than satisfy ... which I believe is its purpose. We get some tantalizing chunks of history - the whole section on the Voynich Manuscript, which might be a hoax springs to mind - and he leaves it up to the reader to go searching the topic further. If an overview of the history of the alphabet is all you want, this book will charm and delight (and the audiobook is read by the author, which is even more of a delight; if you're American, you just have to get used to hearing "zed" a lot). Recommended; now I want more.
August 2, 2020
Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story
Michael Rosen
2015
Notes:
Xiv:…in truth it’s about ‘an’ alphabet, the one that speakers of English use.
Romans didn’t have all 26 letters or the lower case.
1: The Story of A…changed the ‘ahs’ to ‘ays’
21: The Story of B
From minding your Ps and Qs to wondering why X should mark the spot, Alphabetical is a book for everyone who loves words and language. Whether it's how letters are arranged on keyboards or Viking runes, textspeak or zip codes, this book will change the way you think about letters for ever.
How on Earth did we fix upon our twenty-six letters, what do they really mean, and how did we come to write them down in the first place? Michael Rosen takes you on an unforgettable adventure through the history of the alphabet in twenty-six vivid chapters, fizzing with personal anecdotes and fascinating facts. Starting with the mysterious Phoenicians and how sounds first came to be written down, he races on to show how nonsense poems work, pins down the strange story of OK, traces our seven lost letters and tackles the tyranny of spelling, among many many other things.
His heroes of the alphabet range from Edward Lear to Phyllis Pearsall (the inventor of the A-Z), and from the two scribes of Beowulf to rappers. Each chapter takes on a different subject - whether it's codes, umlauts or the writing of dictionaries. Rosen's enthusiasm for letters positively leaps off the page, whether it's the story of his life told through the typewriters he's owned or a chapter on jokes written in a string of gags and word games.
So if you ever wondered why Hawaiian only has a thirteen-letter alphabet, why X should mark the spot or became shorthand for Christmas or how exactly to write down the sound of a wild raspberry, read on . . .
https://www.amazon.ca/Alphabetical-Ev...
~ Michel Rosen Alphabetical
Michael Rosen
2015
Notes:
Xiv:…in truth it’s about ‘an’ alphabet, the one that speakers of English use.
Romans didn’t have all 26 letters or the lower case.
1: The Story of A…changed the ‘ahs’ to ‘ays’
21: The Story of B
From minding your Ps and Qs to wondering why X should mark the spot, Alphabetical is a book for everyone who loves words and language. Whether it's how letters are arranged on keyboards or Viking runes, textspeak or zip codes, this book will change the way you think about letters for ever.
How on Earth did we fix upon our twenty-six letters, what do they really mean, and how did we come to write them down in the first place? Michael Rosen takes you on an unforgettable adventure through the history of the alphabet in twenty-six vivid chapters, fizzing with personal anecdotes and fascinating facts. Starting with the mysterious Phoenicians and how sounds first came to be written down, he races on to show how nonsense poems work, pins down the strange story of OK, traces our seven lost letters and tackles the tyranny of spelling, among many many other things.
His heroes of the alphabet range from Edward Lear to Phyllis Pearsall (the inventor of the A-Z), and from the two scribes of Beowulf to rappers. Each chapter takes on a different subject - whether it's codes, umlauts or the writing of dictionaries. Rosen's enthusiasm for letters positively leaps off the page, whether it's the story of his life told through the typewriters he's owned or a chapter on jokes written in a string of gags and word games.
So if you ever wondered why Hawaiian only has a thirteen-letter alphabet, why X should mark the spot or became shorthand for Christmas or how exactly to write down the sound of a wild raspberry, read on . . .
https://www.amazon.ca/Alphabetical-Ev...
~ Michel Rosen Alphabetical
December 5, 2023
My random nonfiction deep dive of the year. It sounded like an interesting book when it showed up at my book club’s book exchange Christmas party last year, since teaching my kids to read has made the alphabet something much more consciously in mind over the past few years. This was a good book for reading in small chunks and putting down again, as most of the chapters had very little to do with each other. It’s really part history, part memoir, part random collection of information. But I did learn some interesting things about why s often looked like f in documents from colonial times, and how different typefaces came to be, and Viking runes. Probably not one I’d read again, but it was interesting enough. It also took way longer than it should have for it to click that this is the same author that wrote one of my favorite picture books to read aloud to my kids.
March 18, 2022
I've got a nice word for the author. Bloviate. I think he may have used it, but I doubt he knows what it means. I wanted to kill myself listening to the last 15 minutes of this title. He spends half the book on topic, the rest showing us how clever he is, how good he is at foreign accents, and how he writes poetry. He is a poet don't you know. He just oozes 'smug'.
Holy word salad batman, talk about how to take a fascinating subject and turn it into a self promotional, political diatribe. Look elsewhere for books on this topic, there are plenty that will not make you want to bang your head on the desk.
Holy word salad batman, talk about how to take a fascinating subject and turn it into a self promotional, political diatribe. Look elsewhere for books on this topic, there are plenty that will not make you want to bang your head on the desk.
August 22, 2021
If you like language and history (plus a dash of humour/sarcasm), this book would be a potent combination. Otherwise, the alphabetical run-down may be a bit dreary to read sometimes. There's a lot of interesting trivia, but they probably won't stick after a while.
September 28, 2021
Dragged on a bit long, in my opinion. Generally interesting, but also a bit irritating at points.
July 18, 2019
An interesting book that didn't quite make it to fascinating. That's not to say I didn't have to share a tidbit of information from most chapters, but it was missing some spark. I do wish they had shown the shapes of the ancient letters and how they morphed into what we use today. I couldn't always picture them in my head based on the description. Perhaps some of my disappointment was because the book didn't focus on the history of the letters. (My favorite bit of history was about the Great Vowel Shift that turned most letter names from -ay to -ee. I just love the name of the phenomenon - the Great Vowel Shift.) That was definitely provided, but something that could be done in 2-3 pages per letter. Hard to fill up an entire book that way. The essays were interesting, but a bit disjointed. They didn't have a theme tying them all together.
The book is written by a British author. While you wouldn't think it would make much of a difference since Americans and British both speak English, there were time that it did. The "H" chapter was one of those times the differences were quite apparent. Some British dialects drop their "h"s, so I had to read parts of that chapter in a British accent in my head. It also showed up in little things, like the discussion of "ring a ring a rosie", which I learned as "ring around the rosie", or the pronunciation of the letter "z".
The book is written by a British author. While you wouldn't think it would make much of a difference since Americans and British both speak English, there were time that it did. The "H" chapter was one of those times the differences were quite apparent. Some British dialects drop their "h"s, so I had to read parts of that chapter in a British accent in my head. It also showed up in little things, like the discussion of "ring a ring a rosie", which I learned as "ring around the rosie", or the pronunciation of the letter "z".
June 5, 2015
This is an Alphabet book for adults We all probably remember A for apple, B for boy, C for cat, etc. There are 26 chapters, one for each letter of the English alphabet. Each chapter begins with the etymology of the letter, some common or uncommon uses of the letter then moves onto A is for Alphabet, B is for Battledore and to the end where Z is for Zip Codes, an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan. I wonder if I ever knew that before? Most of his essays were fantastic, some ho hum. I was looking forward to S, as that is what my name begins with. S was for signs,interesting, but not nearly as interesting as C is for Codes/Ciphers. I know if I had been a young adult during WW11 I would have been right in there working on code breaking. If they would have had me.
Almost every chapter had some new piece of history that I had previously been unaware of. K is for Korea was perhaps my second favorite chapter. In 1446, under the auspices of King Sejong, a new 28 character alphabet was created because the king wanted "illiterate people to be able to communicate, and so all the people can conveniently learn all the letters to conveniently use for daily use."
Wow, and has Korea ever changed. Whatever happened?
The very last chapter, called The OULIPO Olymics, is word and letter games. I may try some
Almost every chapter had some new piece of history that I had previously been unaware of. K is for Korea was perhaps my second favorite chapter. In 1446, under the auspices of King Sejong, a new 28 character alphabet was created because the king wanted "illiterate people to be able to communicate, and so all the people can conveniently learn all the letters to conveniently use for daily use."
Wow, and has Korea ever changed. Whatever happened?
The very last chapter, called The OULIPO Olymics, is word and letter games. I may try some
August 20, 2015
You might expect a book on the history of the alphabet(and all 26 of its letters) to be incredibly dull, but this book managed to be very informative yet still engaging and accessible. The author shows not just the history and practical applications of the alphabet, but also how much fun it can be to play around with it. There is even a section each of word games and alphabet jokes included! A couple of my personal favorites? Q: Why can't pirates learn the alphabet?
A: They get lost at C.
Q: Why does the alphabet only have 25 letters at
Christmas?
A: No-el, no-el, no-el, no-e-e-el...
Another thing I enjoyed about this book is that is made me actually think about our letters and language, and how many things they have made possible. And Rosen doesn't just talk about individual letters in this book; he addresses many different language-related topics, from disappeared letters, the origin of "OK", and pronunciation debates, to rhymes, nonsense, and acronyms.
This probably isn't a book I'd read over and over again, but there's a hodgepodge of interesting information inside that certainly makes it worth reading.
A: They get lost at C.
Q: Why does the alphabet only have 25 letters at
Christmas?
A: No-el, no-el, no-el, no-e-e-el...
Another thing I enjoyed about this book is that is made me actually think about our letters and language, and how many things they have made possible. And Rosen doesn't just talk about individual letters in this book; he addresses many different language-related topics, from disappeared letters, the origin of "OK", and pronunciation debates, to rhymes, nonsense, and acronyms.
This probably isn't a book I'd read over and over again, but there's a hodgepodge of interesting information inside that certainly makes it worth reading.
February 22, 2015
This is a delightful book, especially for logophiles and poets like myself. Each chapter, quite logically, is about a letter of the alphabet. Each begins with a brief description of the letter's origins, shape and sound. But the really interesting parts of the book come after, in Rosen's fascinating chapters dedicated to various topics beginning with the letter at hand, for instance "C is for Codes." That chapter, by itself, set me off buying and reading several books about codes and cyphers. Though my daughter is tickled by the new "secret" messages we can send each other, my wife can't seem to catch the FEVER! Alas.
This is just one example. But the real star of this book is Rosen's supremely charming curiosity and voice. He seems interested in just about anything, that's well, interesting, and his writing is direct, humorous, and self-effacing enough to take us on each of these journeys: from Viking runes to off rhymes, from LSD to TXTSPK. I read the book in a few days though it's the kind of thing one can pick up and read at leisure.
This is just one example. But the real star of this book is Rosen's supremely charming curiosity and voice. He seems interested in just about anything, that's well, interesting, and his writing is direct, humorous, and self-effacing enough to take us on each of these journeys: from Viking runes to off rhymes, from LSD to TXTSPK. I read the book in a few days though it's the kind of thing one can pick up and read at leisure.
March 19, 2015
nonfiction; history of the alphabet. I requested this one from the library because I was curious to see what Michael Rosen (the children's book author/illustrator) spends his spare time pondering. It turned out to be waaaay more academic than I cared to get into, but still kind of interesting to know that there was this whole layer of an author that I didn't know anything about.
March 29, 2015
I believe myself to be a language geek. I love word play, word histories, origins of idioms, etc. And in fact I am passably coherent in most Romance languages and in German.
But I could only get into Chapter 3, the letter C here. The book is far too scholarly academic for my taste. I had to put it down.
But I could only get into Chapter 3, the letter C here. The book is far too scholarly academic for my taste. I had to put it down.
February 20, 2015
Author talks way to much about his personal experiences.
Few visuals for a book advertised as a fun and interesting book about the alphabet.
400 pages? Poor editing, should have been 200 pages.
Reading this book was like trudging through mud !
Few visuals for a book advertised as a fun and interesting book about the alphabet.
400 pages? Poor editing, should have been 200 pages.
Reading this book was like trudging through mud !
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 2, 2015
Excellent, very enjoyable look at different alphabets, letter by letter. Full of fascinating historical and cultural facts. Rosen is an engaging writer and brings his research together neatly with anecdotes, making this a fairly easy read.
December 5, 2016
Lots of interesting tidbits, but not really what I thought it what be.
August 15, 2024
A ridiculously terrible book. Definitely one of the worst books I've read this year - potentially the very worst.
This book is advertised as telling the story behind each letter in the English alphabet. 26 chapters for 26 letters. That is what I wanted.
What it actually does is start each chapter off with maybe one single page quickly skipping through the history of the letter. And then it goes to a second page that, for some reason, just shows different words that the letter is used in - like "wow, A is in 'lake' and 'raw' and 'dial' - and sometimes in 'Aaron'!" - what am I, 4 years old? Could anything possibly be more useless than this?
Then after the advertised function of the book is quickly glossed over in a page or two, Michael Rosen goes on these long and utterly pointless personal anecdotes about his childhood, experiences with poets (which he claims to be one himself, but the evidence is lacking), typefaces, codes, linguistic history, etc. There are some very interesting nuggets of information in these, but they're hopelessly buried in droning, snooze-fest essays.
Worse, some of the facts are straight up wrong. Laughably wrong. At one point in his useless acronym chapter ("Look, here are a bunch of acronyms!"), he mentions that "HOMES" is a memory device for remembering the Great Lakes of the USA and their order across the map. Except that isn't true. In any way at all. JUST LOOK AT A MAP. What an idiot! He also seems to make up linguistic facts that suit the narratives he spins, without ever providing any sort of reference or backup.
The chapter title pages all have big images of the letter on them. This shows that this book IS capable of printing images, throughout the whole thing. So why, why, WHY are the images wasted on a single picture of each letter, as opposed to diagramming the history of each letter, which again is the whole point of this book! He'll quickly say "A started as a [whatever] shape, before being changed into a [whatever] shape, and if you can imagine it then resembling a [whatever] before getting further transformed into [whatever]..." - hey asshole, why don't you show me a fucking picture?!
Some essays are better than others - some interesting facts on the Korean alphabet, and while the disappeared letters essay should've been cool, it was so disorganized that I just couldn't hold onto it. The whole book was like that, but this chapter especially. It was all surface level trivia obscured by this old guy's ramblings. He also had a very niche local British view and accent and then generalized all language out from that, which could be very off-putting. And his references to American speech shows that he did no research there either and has no idea what he's talking about.
Apparently he's a radio show person, so you could kind of imagine him just talking and talking and talking forever on these subjects into a mic, that's probably how he wrote this book. But an editor should've come in and cut it down by 70-80% *at minimum* and structured it halfway decently too.
And then by the end he just gets so lazy in both essays and in the letter histories that he brushes by them with only a sentence for the lowercase. However he is NOT lazy about continuing to work himself up, call himself a poet again, inflict all of his memories and memoirs on you, while the whole time you're just thinking "all I wanted to know was how the letter T evolved, not your old man views on text speak." A couple chapters later and he's only half-humorously claiming to have invented the idea for Urban Dictionary in the 50s because he wrote down swear words as a child. WHO CARES.
Let's be clear here, I love typography, I love linguistics, I love history, I love their combinations and intersections, I love trivia, I love learning all kinds of random things. Rosen's book is a stinker across the board and utterly fails at these things as well as its stated purpose. I would recommend staying far away from this book and honestly far away from Michael Rosen if this is the kind of drivel he puts out.
This book is advertised as telling the story behind each letter in the English alphabet. 26 chapters for 26 letters. That is what I wanted.
What it actually does is start each chapter off with maybe one single page quickly skipping through the history of the letter. And then it goes to a second page that, for some reason, just shows different words that the letter is used in - like "wow, A is in 'lake' and 'raw' and 'dial' - and sometimes in 'Aaron'!" - what am I, 4 years old? Could anything possibly be more useless than this?
Then after the advertised function of the book is quickly glossed over in a page or two, Michael Rosen goes on these long and utterly pointless personal anecdotes about his childhood, experiences with poets (which he claims to be one himself, but the evidence is lacking), typefaces, codes, linguistic history, etc. There are some very interesting nuggets of information in these, but they're hopelessly buried in droning, snooze-fest essays.
Worse, some of the facts are straight up wrong. Laughably wrong. At one point in his useless acronym chapter ("Look, here are a bunch of acronyms!"), he mentions that "HOMES" is a memory device for remembering the Great Lakes of the USA and their order across the map. Except that isn't true. In any way at all. JUST LOOK AT A MAP. What an idiot! He also seems to make up linguistic facts that suit the narratives he spins, without ever providing any sort of reference or backup.
The chapter title pages all have big images of the letter on them. This shows that this book IS capable of printing images, throughout the whole thing. So why, why, WHY are the images wasted on a single picture of each letter, as opposed to diagramming the history of each letter, which again is the whole point of this book! He'll quickly say "A started as a [whatever] shape, before being changed into a [whatever] shape, and if you can imagine it then resembling a [whatever] before getting further transformed into [whatever]..." - hey asshole, why don't you show me a fucking picture?!
Some essays are better than others - some interesting facts on the Korean alphabet, and while the disappeared letters essay should've been cool, it was so disorganized that I just couldn't hold onto it. The whole book was like that, but this chapter especially. It was all surface level trivia obscured by this old guy's ramblings. He also had a very niche local British view and accent and then generalized all language out from that, which could be very off-putting. And his references to American speech shows that he did no research there either and has no idea what he's talking about.
Apparently he's a radio show person, so you could kind of imagine him just talking and talking and talking forever on these subjects into a mic, that's probably how he wrote this book. But an editor should've come in and cut it down by 70-80% *at minimum* and structured it halfway decently too.
And then by the end he just gets so lazy in both essays and in the letter histories that he brushes by them with only a sentence for the lowercase. However he is NOT lazy about continuing to work himself up, call himself a poet again, inflict all of his memories and memoirs on you, while the whole time you're just thinking "all I wanted to know was how the letter T evolved, not your old man views on text speak." A couple chapters later and he's only half-humorously claiming to have invented the idea for Urban Dictionary in the 50s because he wrote down swear words as a child. WHO CARES.
Let's be clear here, I love typography, I love linguistics, I love history, I love their combinations and intersections, I love trivia, I love learning all kinds of random things. Rosen's book is a stinker across the board and utterly fails at these things as well as its stated purpose. I would recommend staying far away from this book and honestly far away from Michael Rosen if this is the kind of drivel he puts out.
September 2, 2020
I'm torn, because it was readable and interesting while at the same time being somewhat disappointing, but I don't want to penalize authors for opportunities lost and each chapter is itself interesting and well-written ... but heck, you could have a book, every sentence of which was Art, and yet which was unreadable as a whole. So two stars, and maybe he'll think better next time.
I think I was expecting a slightly different book—one which, for better or for worse, talked about each letter, where it came from, how it changed and developed, its uses, etc., and the book does do this, only it does it for about 2 pages per letter, then blathers on about how usages like (not a direct quote, just evoking the mood): "D goes with W for dwarf and is friends with R but not with L unless inside a word like Kindle" and I skipped all of those paragraphs, and then he moves on to a random essay.
It also, weirdly, doesn't have illustrations, and it needs them. Rosen will natter away about how a letter begans as a lopsided something-or-other, gets turned around by the Phoenicians, inverted by the Greeks, straighteneed up by the Romans, etc. ... it's as if he thinks he's lecturing on the radio, rather than writing a book. Illustrations are our friend! I'm shocked they weren't included.
After dispensing with a given letter's history, he moves on to a random topic inspired by the the letter, e.g. he might have talked about bananas for B, say. To be fair, he kinda sorta tries to keep his 26 essays about words/language/codes, etc., rather than fruit, but there's no real connection other than that, no emotional throughline, and I'm unlikely to remember any of his given anecdotes. Ultimately, this was bathroom reading. So I moved it there, and now I'm finished.
Another reader mentioned Shady Characters, so I'll also mention it, as I also read it, liked it, and it lives up to its promise.
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).
I think I was expecting a slightly different book—one which, for better or for worse, talked about each letter, where it came from, how it changed and developed, its uses, etc., and the book does do this, only it does it for about 2 pages per letter, then blathers on about how usages like (not a direct quote, just evoking the mood): "D goes with W for dwarf and is friends with R but not with L unless inside a word like Kindle" and I skipped all of those paragraphs, and then he moves on to a random essay.
It also, weirdly, doesn't have illustrations, and it needs them. Rosen will natter away about how a letter begans as a lopsided something-or-other, gets turned around by the Phoenicians, inverted by the Greeks, straighteneed up by the Romans, etc. ... it's as if he thinks he's lecturing on the radio, rather than writing a book. Illustrations are our friend! I'm shocked they weren't included.
After dispensing with a given letter's history, he moves on to a random topic inspired by the the letter, e.g. he might have talked about bananas for B, say. To be fair, he kinda sorta tries to keep his 26 essays about words/language/codes, etc., rather than fruit, but there's no real connection other than that, no emotional throughline, and I'm unlikely to remember any of his given anecdotes. Ultimately, this was bathroom reading. So I moved it there, and now I'm finished.
Another reader mentioned Shady Characters, so I'll also mention it, as I also read it, liked it, and it lives up to its promise.
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).
December 9, 2016
When I was a little girl, one of my favorite things about each volume of the World Book Encyclopedia was the opening entry for the letter of the alphabet. Such exotic peoples, the Phoenicians, the Sumarians, such fun seeing the transformation of the letter over time, such fun seeing how the letter began as a representation of a specific thing-in-the-world. More than 50 years later, I remember reading those pages with open-mouthed wonder, tracing the various letter forms with my finger.
So for me, this book was pure delight -- greatly expanded entries for each letter, beautiful pages and type, dazzling stories, and time spent with a writer, Michael Rosen, who shares my geekiness over the not-at-all humble alphabet. The format makes it easy to pick up and put down in those segments of time that are too little to dive into the novel you're working on, easy to read while you're eating breakfast, or waiting for the water to boil. I'm so glad it was featured in the Lars Book Club, which added a lot of pleasure to my experience of reading it (even if I read it over a longer period of time than she did).
This book would make a great gift for the right person, a gift you might not think of, but that would probably be welcomed with a giant smile. I really loved it.
So for me, this book was pure delight -- greatly expanded entries for each letter, beautiful pages and type, dazzling stories, and time spent with a writer, Michael Rosen, who shares my geekiness over the not-at-all humble alphabet. The format makes it easy to pick up and put down in those segments of time that are too little to dive into the novel you're working on, easy to read while you're eating breakfast, or waiting for the water to boil. I'm so glad it was featured in the Lars Book Club, which added a lot of pleasure to my experience of reading it (even if I read it over a longer period of time than she did).
This book would make a great gift for the right person, a gift you might not think of, but that would probably be welcomed with a giant smile. I really loved it.
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