"The Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson

This book vacillated between the incredibly profound and the somewhat trivial. I adored the sections when it made history come alive, in the same way that Connections made science and warfare relevant, by describing the ways in which conquests or trends influenced language (the Norman invasion, e.g.). Occasionally, however, the text delved too deeply into trivialities, such as the fifty ways a certain word might be pronounced. Some paragraphs were only of skimmable interest... but not so many, so the book still gets a 2/3.

Juno

I liked this movie. I'm not sure that I bought a 20-year-old in the role of a 16-year-old... it made her, by nature, a bit more comfortable in he snarkiness than I'm willing to give for even a self-assured high schooler, while her not-boyfriend was so much more believable as a person... but I guess that was supposed to be the point... In the end, what I really loved was the ending. I feared that it might go into the saccharine happy-ending of, say, Saved! ...but it did not... which is rare. I especially liked that even though the man-with-power blew things because he has the maturity of a 16-year-old, it didn't stop the women from getting what they needed out of the situation. Not groundbreaking in style, but unusually satisfying as a story. Brava. (Rated 3+)