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Davidwisely
you have to understand that the platform that he operates from and the readership he is performing to as an author is in a more pop culture context. Consequently his works that are concerned with more academic topics such as Mother Tongue, Shakespeare or a short history of nearly everything are aimed at a demographic of people who may not have approached these subject matters in any depth but are none the less interested in engaging with them in a light hearted easy reading framework whilst commuting for instance, casual readers in short. They clearly are not meant to be academic companions to their thematic content!!! Besides he's an ex-journalist, he uses superb language to great effect and consequently is a brilliant raconteur. If you really want to see what Bill Bryson does and does exceptionally well then read Im a stranger here myself or the Lost continent, he can make the most inane eventless episode into a really funny anecdote.
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Crustclock
Yeah, Mother Tongue is weighed down with a lot of dubious 'factbox' filler which often amounts to "hey look at these kerazy foreigners" (i.e. not Americans), and will drop complete howlers if it's conducive to a crap gag. But a little bit of bullshit is an okay price for the good message about why language is interesting, and what Linguisitcs ISN'T about (split infinitives, double negatives etc). It got me interested in the subject, even though I think less of the book now I've been studying it formally.
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