“If you want to insult a woman, call her a prostitute. If you want to insult a man, call him a woman.”

This was a fun nonfiction book. Which feels weird to say about a book that was essentially about misogyny. But since it was about linguistics, specifically how misogyny creeps into our language (for even the most committed feminists), the facts in here were both extremely damning and oddly hopeful. Language changes, after all.

I particularly enjoyed its defense of language styles considered feminine (like hedging or saying ‘like’) and have been unapologetically writing “feminine” reviews ever since.

But what dropped it down to a four, for me, was its neither here nor there argumentation style (what I like to call The Hannah Arendt Format). Don’t get me wrong, some people consider Hannah Arendt to be peak philosophy writing. But for me, it’s neither ‘here are all the facts, draw your own conclusions’ nor tightly valid, thesis-heavy writing (and I like my arguments to be toight like a tiger, soundness-wise).

Still, really enjoyable. Especially the audiobook.