As I'm on half term I went for a walk in Wolverhampton yesterday and found one of their semi-regular book sales. For a total of £15 I picked up David Crystals "Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language", David Crystals "Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language" and the less academic but still quite entetaining "The Story of English".

An unexpectedly good book buying day.

The books will, I trust, provide material from which you can start numerous good threads here?

quote: I picked up David Crystals "Cambridge Encyclopedia ...", David Crystals "Cambridge Encyclopedia ... " and ... "The Story of English".
Interesting, that last title. It's by Crum, MacNeil, and Cran - but Crystal also wrote a book titled The Stories of English.

The last one is based on a TV series and is written by journalists rather than academics so I'm a little wary of it, but I'll give it a go.

I saw the series and it was rather good for an introduction to language. Robert MacNeil had a sequel that aired a while back which got good reviews, too.

I enjoyed the Story of English, although I prefer The Language Instinct . I just picked up Words and Rules at the library and it has been fascinating so far.