> In the non-fiction category I'll recommend anything by Bill Bryson. Please no. Bryson’s The Mother Tongue is one of the worst pop-sci books on linguistics e

> In the non-fiction category I'll recommend anything by Bill Bryson. Please no. Bryson’s The Mother Tongue is one of the worst pop-sci books on linguistics ever published, with a factual error or urban myth on nearly every page. Because, after all, Bryson is a journalist and a humorist and not any actual expert in that field. As entertaining as some of his other books may be, I suspect that he plays fast and loose with facts there as well.