Wow, was I surprised to see that my report will be in the minority here. I thought more people would leave this book with the same impression I did. I was hanging around at a Barnes and Noble and picked this book up. I enjoyed the first two entries I read, so bought the book for reading in my...ahem, boudoir -- I enjoy books with short sections that can occupy my brief time therein.
The author promises to point out trite and hackneyed abuses of the language, but what I found was a simpleton's guide to expressions that had grown old and repetitive to him. Why would I call the author a simpleton? Because he is just plain wrong on over half of the expressions that he criticizes. He makes fun of some items correctly, such as abuses of "literally" and "unique", or some overworked catchphrases like "Where's the beef?", but then loses it.
Many of the expressions he abhors are actually rich in history, and represent an admirable nod to tradition, human experience, etymology, and different eras. For example, he hates, "Don't count your chickens before they hatch." and says it's silly for modern, urbanized people to be talking about chickens. Really? The "chickens" are from Aesop's Fable 'The Milk Maid' and date back to 600 BC. An old reference, for sure, but I think the expression has proven itself to have some staying power. For this writer to come along and say we should abandon classic references to such seminal works as Aesop's Fables, just because he's bored of hearing it, is just him griping - and demonstrating an ignorance of literature, history, and etymology. How can one write a book on language with that handicap?
Many others of his gripes fall into the "you don't own chickens, so find a better way to express yourself" formula. His is a sad, robotic interpretation of language. Do we really have to own chickens to talk about them, or would the world be more colorful if we allow (or rather encourage) people to talk with allegory, metaphor, and parable?
He lambastes several business expressions, and is right about a few of them. But most of them have very specific meanings, and the words were invented for a reason - to fill a hole that language didn't cover. A lot of words that he would banish are actually very useful so long as they are used correctly. "Downsized" and "Synergy" are two business words the author hates, but I'll stand to defend. When a person loses a job because a company "downsized" what it means is, yes they were fired, but through no fault of their own. That is a very different meaning than "fired" which the author says is more to the point. "Synergies", meanwhile, is certainly used too often, but nevertheless does fit on occasion: getting your chocolate in my peanut butter comes to mind. I don't agree with the author that we should banish the words.
Other expressions he dislikes are actually very useful shorthand that people can use to effectively communicate with one another. Is the expression "it'll be like finding a needle in a haystack" really so terrible, or is it actually more colorful and quicker to the point than saying "it will be extremely hard to find, because we are looking for something very small in a very big area of possible locations"? The author says the latter is preferable, because it uses plain English instead of a tired, overworked idiom. I say the former is better because it is 'language shorthand'.
Basically, the book was probably based on a few good entries, then the author had to fill up another hundred pages, and just grabbed whatever expressions he could think of, and criticized them. It looks to me like good expressions are thrown in with bad. Just to annoy the author, let me say that he has "thrown the baby out with the bathwater".
