Julie Sedivy’s Linguaphile is a series of very long essays about the author’s experience with learning languages and her love for languages.

The author draws a lot from her personal and professional experience as a linguist. The book is very well researched, but that wasn’t really evident when I was reading it because the bibliography and citations are not mentioned until the very end, so for most of the book, it felt that the author was drawing her own conclusions instead. A lot of statements felt like it was stated to be truth when it really does just reflect upon the author’s own experiences.

I also thought that the author’s use of flowery language and metaphoric prose was quite excessive, as well as her segues into her divorce and proceedings. This book really could have benefited from editing, and it wasn’t immediately clear that this is less about the study of linguistics and more personal essays/memoir format.

However, there are some wonderful ideas about languages and how it enriches your life and changes your perspective about your relationship to different cultures, and the author is a thoughtful and introspective author.

Thank you, NetGalley and the publishing team at Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing a complimentary eARC for review.