The Way We Talk Now: Commentaries on Language and Culture from NPR’s “Fresh Air” by Geoffrey Nunberg
Grade: B
The short essays in The Way We Talk Now ought to have been perfect for me, given my interest in language and the fact that my reading time is so fractured these days. I didn’t particularly enjoy them, though. At times I had to force myself to continue, and that seemed odd. Some of the topics were interesting, and Nunberg is certainly a capable writer. And funny. In one essay, he was theorizing where a certain annoying saying might have come from, and he wrote, “But actually I don’t know that it matters much just which shipment of fruit this bug came in with.” That gave me a good giggle.
So why didn’t I enjoy this book more? My guess is that the essays are simply too old. They’re supposed to be about “the way we talk now,” but they date from 1989 to 2001, so even the most recent ones are over ten years old. What was new and hip back then is now old, perhaps a bit trite, and maybe even irrelevant. I don’t know, but I didn’t enjoy the book much, so I can’t recommend it.