log(book)
admin
There are currently 287 books waiting for a review.

List: themes:language

Goodreads LibraryThing Amazon
Cover of Embassytown.

Embassytown

by China Miéville · published 2011 · last read 2024-06-06
★★★★★
Embassytown by China Miéville starts out as okay-if-weird scifi, with decent characters, plausibly weird worldbuilding, and appropriately weird aliens, so everything you'd expect from Miéville. It starts by following a good if generic f
Goodreads LibraryThing Amazon
Cover of Die dampfenden Hälse der Pferde im Turm von Babel.

Die dampfenden Hälse der Pferde im Turm von Babel

by Franz Fühmann · published 1978 · read 2000-03-01
★★★★★
Five stars mean a book changed my life. This book changed my life several times, and I'm not sure it's done with me yet. It's about language. It's about philosophy. It's about linguistics. It's about playing with language, and it's about he
Goodreads
Cover of Hellspark.

Hellspark

by Janet Kagan · published 1988 · last read 2025-06-01
★★★★★
Hellspark is not without faults, but faults do not remove a five-star rating given out of pure joy. This is what I want my scifi to be like, and the fact that Kagan has not published much (and died in 2008) was rough to discover in a world
Goodreads LibraryThing Amazon
Cover of Babel-17.

Babel-17

by Samuel R. Delany · published 1966 · last read 2023-07-30
★★★★★
It's been a long time (apart from Too Like The Lightning) that I've read a novel that felt so tailored to me like Babel-17. I mean, it's a queer polyamorous scifi novel where linguistics are key, even to winning space battles, which the
Goodreads LibraryThing Amazon
Cover of Black Coast.

Black Coast

by Mike Brooks · published 2021 · read 2022-06-20
★★★★★
Damn near a five star read, just on the basis of the linguistic world building. Had I reviewed this book immediately after reading it, it would have been an easy five star rating, so I'm rounding it up to five stars. The story itself is mor
Goodreads
Cover of Vita Nostra.

Vita Nostra

by Marina Dyachenko · published 2007 · read 2021-08-15
★★★★☆
Vita Nostra is often described as "If Kafka had written Harry Potter", and neither part is a good fit. Closer to the truth would be to call it a Russian version of The Magicians
Goodreads LibraryThing Amazon
Cover of The Awful German Language.

The Awful German Language

by Mark Twain · published 2010 · read 2007-07-01
★★★★☆
Twain about the awfulness of German is honestly peak Twain. He's funny, and more: he's right.
Goodreads LibraryThing Amazon
Cover of 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing: Proven Professional Techniques for Writing Ith Style and Power.

100 Ways to Improve Your Writing: Proven Professional Techniques for Writing Ith Style and Power

by Gary Provost · published 1985 · read 2019-09-21
★★★★☆
100 Ways to Improve Your Writing by Gary Provost is from 1985 and has aged remarkably well. It's a set of rules, short and to the point. Some advice is dated and not relevant any longer – a couple of hints on how to acquire information an
Goodreads
Cover of A Desolation Called Peace.

A Desolation Called Peace

by Arkady Martine · published 2021 · read 2021-04-11
★★★★☆
Generally, A Desolation Called Peace is nearly as good as A Memory Called Empire. It replaces parts of the intrical cultural commentary with very alien aliens who need to be communicated with, but
Goodreads LibraryThing Amazon
Cover of A Memory Called Empire.

A Memory Called Empire

by Arkady Martine · published 2019 · last read 2021-03-26
★★★★☆
A junior ambassador from one alien nation and planet to another, which boasts of a highly complex language and culture? Finding herself scrambling to catch up with her predecessor (rudely murdered, instead of being in her brain as would be
Goodreads LibraryThing Amazon
Cover of Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language.

Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language

by Gretchen McCulloch · published 2019 · read 2020-04-18
★★★★☆
Excellent book on internet linguistics! Touches all the important points and then some. I learnt about Third Places and where thankful!Tobias notation originates, and felt myself and my internet habits covered quite comprehensively.
Goodreads LibraryThing Amazon
Cover of Pala und die seltsame Verflüchtigung der Worte.

Pala und die seltsame Verflüchtigung der Worte

by Ralf Isau · published 2002 · read 2004-11-01
★★☆☆☆
Pala is a book about language, about literature, about poetry – and yet, I didn't really like it. Maybe it's that I had high expectations from Franz Fühmann's masterwork, or that it just felt like it was trying too hard. Whatever it was, de
Goodreads LibraryThing Amazon
Cover of Native Tongue.

Native Tongue

by Suzette Haden Elgin · published 1984 · read 2020-10-19
★★☆☆☆
Interesting, but ultimately not satisfying. Imagine a Handmaid's Tale style dystopian future but with xenolinguistics. There's a subtle female language-based resistance, and the whole setup is neat, but it doesn't really go anywhere. Life g
Goodreads
Cover of Naudsonce.

Naudsonce

by H. Beam Piper · published 1962 · read 2021-01-07
★★☆☆☆
Naudsonce is a very neat linugistical scifi story. It's also terribly unimaginative in every other way: Aliens who communicate wildly differently, yet follow human norms in every other way? Puh-lease. Everything good done here was done bett
Goodreads LibraryThing Amazon
Cover of Babel.

Babel

by R. F. Kuang · published 2022 · read 2022-09-22
★★☆☆☆
What is this, the book of a thousand subtitles? I wanted to justify my initial hype, and see the book listed as "Babel: An Arcane History", whereas I remember it as "Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Trans
Goodreads LibraryThing Amazon
Cover of The Embedding.

The Embedding

by Ian Watson · published 1973 · read 2020-10-10
★☆☆☆☆ (did not finish)
I am into linguistics sci-fi, and it was in search of more of it that I read this book. Or, at least, tried to read it: I gave up about 60% in, and it didn't work for me at all. First Contact, dodgy language experiments on kids, just as dod