Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and SavoryBy Roy Blount Jr.
Sarah Crichton Books, 2008. 364 pgs. Nonfiction
Roy Blount is a wordmeister. And Alphabet Juice is a tall glass of words. Blount explores several hundred words as to their usage, their origins, their feel, taste, and smell, all mixed with good portion of humor. Included in Blount's selection of words are entries pertaining to writing (adjective, adverb, colon, comma, metaphor, simile), language phenomena (baseballese, Berraisms, menu-ese), people (Joseph Addison, Mel Blanc, Garrison Keillor), and numerous categories such as "marriage, impact of word choice upon" and "names, famous, whose correct pronunciation is so narrowly known that if you use it, you'll seem wrong."
Alphabet Juice is a romp through the world of words frought with trivia, anecdotes, jokes, and poems. Read it cover to cover or just dive in anywhere and skip about.
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