Jay (![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small} starlurker) wrote in thefourthvine, |
You are clearly evil for enabling me.
I think the books below will hit your taste for histories of unlikely things. I'm restricting myself to 2 again because I really can go on and on about books. I'm also making these recs based on your eagerness for The Perfect Scent. Both are available for the Kindle.
Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker by James McManus is a somewhat overlong book but is so entertainingly and genially told that I forgave the flaw quite easily. Really fascinating stuff, especially the history of the game and the violence that permeated it back then and still present in the aggressive terminology that poker uses.
n the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language by Arika Okrent is one I can't believe I didn't recommend to you initially. How can you resist a title like that? It's a lively, fascinating book about our quest to build a better language and some of the, er, interesting individuals who have tried and failed to create new languages. The author's love for her subject shines through in this book, and I really appreciated her affection for all languages -- she took the KLCP (Klingon Language Certification Program) and scored a 93, which means she studied really hard for it! How awesome is that?
I think the books below will hit your taste for histories of unlikely things. I'm restricting myself to 2 again because I really can go on and on about books. I'm also making these recs based on your eagerness for The Perfect Scent. Both are available for the Kindle.
Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker by James McManus is a somewhat overlong book but is so entertainingly and genially told that I forgave the flaw quite easily. Really fascinating stuff, especially the history of the game and the violence that permeated it back then and still present in the aggressive terminology that poker uses.
n the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language by Arika Okrent is one I can't believe I didn't recommend to you initially. How can you resist a title like that? It's a lively, fascinating book about our quest to build a better language and some of the, er, interesting individuals who have tried and failed to create new languages. The author's love for her subject shines through in this book, and I really appreciated her affection for all languages -- she took the KLCP (Klingon Language Certification Program) and scored a 93, which means she studied really hard for it! How awesome is that?
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