2022, book 16: Babel no more: The search for the world's most extraordinary language learners, Michael Erard

Painfully trite. Erard likes the sound of his own voice—or the look of his own typing. Chapters are wasted repeating how language proficiency cannot be encoded in one binary variable. You don't fucking say? Erard doesn't even offer any sort of solution here: instead, he just yammers on about it.

He repeatedly draws bizarrely definite conclusions not borne out by the data he presents. I use the word "data" almost mockingly here, since it's mostly a collection of anecdotes. My favourite, stated without source, of course: "drinking sage tea increases one's recall of words modestly, as does the odor of rosemary." Yes, no doubt, as does the sacrificing of goats and young virgins, but only when Mars is in retrograde. Related: Erard wastes a page on a discussion of phrenology, of all things. He also drones on about the Geschwind-Galaburda hypothesis, without mentioning—or perhaps even without being aware—that it's a highly contested hypothesis at best, with no conclusive evidence in its favour.

The book jacket claims Erard has a master's degree in linguistics, which makes the error-ridden neurolinguistic chapters all the more painful. In general, Erard appears to have no interest in factual truth, and only a vague understanding of the link between cause and effect.

His implied assertion that the New Testament was written in Latin doesn't help matters, nor does the chapter dedicated to "statistics" of a self-reported language ability survey (which he treats as gospel, of course!).

Also, this marvel on page 96:

[...standing on the shoulders of giants...] Some scientists have suggested that in order to comprehend a metaphor, you have to know that someone intends a meaning other than a literal reference to giants' shoulders.

No. Fucking. Shit. Was he drunk when writing this drivel?

The COVID-19 pandemic made us all do crazy things. One of mine was sticking with this book till the end.