Collection: Adult Non Fiction - Languages and Literature

Did you know that 'Almost' is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order? Or that 'Stewardesses' is the longest word you can type solely with your left hand? Or that fireflies aren't flies, they're beetles? From information about words and their uses, usef...

Literature is a technology like any other. And the writers we revere - from Homer to Shakespeare, Austen to Ferrante - each made a unique technical breakthrough that can be viewed as both a narrative and neuroscientific advancement. But literature's great invention was to address problems we coul...

Do you have strong feelings about the word irregardless? Have you ever tried to define the word is? Brimming with intelligence and personality, this vastly entertaining account of how dictionaries are made is a must-read for word mavens.

For the first time, the best of ABC presenter Roly Sussex's popular 'Words for Today' program are collected in book form. A must-read for all language nerds. Did you know that the word salary comes from the Latin sal for 'salt', since part of the payment to Roman soldiers was in salt? That braces...

"Even the best wordsmiths can trip over words that are commonly misused, mixed up or misspelled. This useful, playful reference clears up these language issues to help anyone get their word use straight. With clear examples of how to sharpen up text, writers will be set to improve their work, whe...

Old English is the language you think you know until you actually hear or see it. Unlike Shakespearean English or even Chaucer's Middle English, Old English the language of Beowulf defies comprehension by untrained modern readers. Used throughout much of Britain more than a thousand years ago, it...

Words are Eagles collects in one place the essays of award-winning novelist and nature writer, Gregory Day. Grounded in the landscape of southwestern Victoria, and infused with the heightened sense of place and environmental literacy that have long been key to Day's work, these essays traverse la...

A major collection of speeches by Nobel Laureate, Jose Ramos-Horta. Includes a call-to-action on the key issues facing our world today. The Twenty-first Century offers us a chance, a unique chance, to coalesce around common global interests - for example to reverse the nefarious consequences of c...

Barbara Lasserre brings the neglected world of onomatopoeia to life in this witty little gem of a book which will delight language lovers. If it goes 'moo' then every child knows it's a cow. If it goes 'Wham! Bam! Crash!' we're in a fast-paced comic. But what goes 'krknout'? Barbara Lasserre tak...

A brash, enlightening, and wildly entertaining feminist look at gendered language and the way it shapes us...