This is an interesting little book – it’s about all the languages of Europe. It’s definitely a survey – the author chooses to highlight something interesting or quirky about each language, and you will definitely run into languages you’ve never heard of before. (I’ll admit, as an American, it’s actually kind of hard to grok exactly how diverse it is linguistically in a land where the languages spoken are the original languages. You can get a sense of it by looking at the number of languages spoken by our native tribes, but so many of those were overwhelmed by European colonization it’s still hard to understand the scale. But I digress.)
Don’t come to this book expecting to learn much about the languages themselves, though that is touched on with some of them. What you’ll get instead are interesting historical facts. Like when they decided to revive Cornish there was a schism between those that wanted to pick up where it left off in the late 1800s, and those that wanted to bring it back to its Medieval heyday. It’s a fun read if you like languages.
For the 10th book in this series, we get to mix things up a bit – Mercy’s off to Europe, but not by choice. No, Mercy’s managed to get herself kidnapped by the king of the vampires of Europe, who’s under the impression that she’s the most powerful person in the Columbia Basin pack, as well as the alliance of the other supernatural folks in the area. Granted, she actually is, but not for the reasons you’d think.
I found this book on one of my free and bargain Kindle newsletters. It was written (translated at the very least) at the turn of last century, so I’m guessing it’s in the public domain now.
An interesting book about books, libraries and the people that have created libraries, both private and public. I can’t come to a decision as to whether or not it’s a good book. It’s good information, but man is it rambling.
The North Wind and the Sea 