Customer Reviews

More Anguished English: an Expose of Embarrassing Excruciating, and Egregious Errors in English

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The biggest trouble I have is trying to read this book in public. I laugh out loud and have tears in my eyes. I'm sure on lookers worry that someone should be calling the white coats out for me. The Lederer books are all a gem for anyone, but the more well read you are, the more you appreciate this digest of mis-statements and bloopers.

After you read about page of these bloopers, you'll begin to get that uncontrollable laughter that really shakes up your insides and brings tears to your eyes. That's the time to stop and save the rest for tomorrow because laughs like that you should have every day.

Though Richard Lederer writes and introduces his books beautifully, the series of these books, in which the author shares a collection of English errors, I found it not to be as entertaining as I thought or hoped it would. That is not to say that they are not a good buy, but rather, that whether you will find this book funny or not, is a very subjective point of view.

For some, it will merely put a smile on their face, other will have some giggles, and still some more, will convulse with laughter.

Buy it or not, It will be subjective. There is nothing that would have prepared me ahead of time... so again, it is a matter of taste and what you may find funny.

I ordered this book directly from Richard Lederer after hearing him interviewed on radio. It was intrigued since my background is in journalism. The book arrived in the mail, and I put it on the nightstand, planning to read myself to sleep that Friday night.

Big mistake.

Not only did I laugh too much for sleep to come, once I finished reading the entire book cover-to-cover and turning out the light around 2 a.m., I kept remembering funny things that made me break out laughing all over again. It's fortunate that I was into a weekend. The best part, of course, was that I had seen many similar gaffes in print myself, and that made some of the ones in the book all the funnier to me.

Entertaining as it is, More Anguished English would also make an excellent textbook for teaching writers what NOT to do.

Years ago, a 2 page leaflet named "A Myth is a Female Moth" came into my possession, and it was long before internet. When I took it so my co-workers could read it, one of them went down on his knees, then flat on the floor laughing. He could not breathe for a minute and calling for help was an option. When I ran across this and, many years later, googled it, low and behold there is a book. This is so entertaining, and presented so cleverly, it is truly joyous to read. I recommend it to be read by anyone human. In this day and time, it might just be the only thing humorous one can run across in a day!

This book is great for Enlish lovers. Richard Lederer writes witty books which are easily read and quite clever.

There is an endless supply of this type of English bashing. It is not fractured per se, only verbs could be that. It is sometimes lewd, crude, and politically incorrect.

The AMERICAN HERITAGE Dictionary describes 'Anguish" as being
"tormentend;" in MW, it is "full of torment." That's how I feel when the censors get on my case. Lay off, whoever you are. I haven't been able to see where I went wrong -- I didn't appreciate the puns and some of the language. To me, this is not funny. Poe is one of my favorite writers and should not be demeaned in such a fashion.

Richard Lederer is the author of fifteen other books about English and has a column, "Looking at Language" in newspapers and magazines nationwide. Today's column by our local grammar guru suggests everyone use redundancies: "refer back," 'Past history,' and "absolute necessity." I don't always agree with him, especially over the use of the word 'that.' It makes the speaker sound ignorant to use too many of that word. Yet, he claims that you can't use too many. I beg to differ.

He is not an expert on English in spite of what that total may presume. Maybe he is educated though it does not show through puns, which is his specialty. He has made it his life's dream to do put-downs on our English. He still has a lot to learn.

This book is just a continuation of the first one, of which me made as many cast-offs as he could to generate more income. Too much of anything can be bad, and this continuing series is not what it could be. If he'd leave off the crude bathroom humor, sleaze, profanity, making fun of literature icons, and berating our wonderful language skills, it might be tolerable. As is, it is for a certain small audience of unschooled people who want to be titilated and share the ugly stuff with like-minded people. There are some of us who revere the use of English, grammatical correctness and vocabulary of which is lacking in these books.