Brilliant

Essential Language Reference

By: Mary Lou Cheatham

Narrated by: Patricia Swanson

Length: 4 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

Did you ever watch the rooster parked on a barnyard fence? Chanticleer, the famed rooster from The Canterbury Tales, announced the rising of the sun. Did you ever hear a young rooster trying to learn to crow? He had to work at it until he perfected his unique sound. 

Like farm chickens, we have much to communicate. What joy it brings when we organize our thoughts and learn to choose the right words that are standard. We want to have variety in our human communications with color and character, humor and sincerity, polished and practiced to an acceptable standard. 

Be Brilliant:

• Take your mind on an adventure studying metaphors, clichés, and idioms
• Enjoy hearing a few malapropisms
• Explore words with obscure beginnings
• Be aware of what others are telling you when they use popular terms that are seldom defined
• Review some verbs you haven’t considered in years
• Broaden your horizons!

A note from the author: I spend much of my energy trying to use acceptable language. I hope not to make grammatical mistakes. Since I grew up in South Mississippi, I have a sound in my voice that will never go away. Words are slightly flat. I love my people back home, and perhaps I hold on to a certain sound with nostalgia. 

A few years ago, two people who claimed to be my friends ridiculed my speech. They called it charming, but they were making fun of me. I cried in private. Then I started trying to listen to M-W.com and studied the inflection of the speakers there. I practiced trying to say “walk” and “talk” in a way that didn’t sound quite so flat. I learned to say a few words in a style that sounded better to me, but I still had my Mississippi drawl. 

My daughter said, “Mom, you sprinkle a few words pronounced with a different accent into your speech. It sounds silly.” Eventually, I gave up and became more comfortable with my voice, but I’ll never stop trying to practice standard language. 

The recorded voices in the dictionaries, such as M-W.com and Dictionary.com, cannot remake an accent, but they serve the purpose of their intentions well. They are excellent sources of learning the acceptable way to pronounce words. 

In Brilliant, you will find words and speech patterns that will add to the appropriateness of language. As you work on the words included here, please be comfortable with your own usage while you become aware of some expressions that could stand to be improved. 

It’s like flying beneath the radar. Let’s look for that comfortable place where we can express ourselves without being misunderstood or ridiculed. One definition of genius is the ability to adjust to the environment. People will consider you a genius if you use language effectively without affectation. You will be brilliant.

©2021 Mary G. Cooke (P)2021 Mary G. Cooke

Somewhat Tedious and Random Language Reference

I've recently become enamored with audiobooks, but unfortunately, not every kind of book is well suited to the format. For instance, I think cookbooks are really poor in audiobook format unless the publisher’s willing to include a PDF of the recipes so you can flip through them and make them more easily. This audiobook is another type of book I don't think works well in audiobook format. It's a somewhat eclectic, and even random, collection of language information. Is it truly essential, as suggested by the subtitle? Probably not. (More on that later) What makes this a hard listen is how often the author has to spell out words to get her language reference tidbits or exercises across. Also, the book is set up as a reference book in alphabetical order, so it skips around from topic to topic based on where it would fall in alphabetical order. The information might have been better organized into logical topics so that it wouldn't be so challenging to connect ideas far apart in the alphabet but relatively close in concept. Each chapter starts with an interesting quote. This wasn't clear at first, so I was trying to figure out how the quote fit in with what then ended up being the first entry. Since all visual clues are lacking in audiobook format, the author might have said a simple statement at the start of the book that each letter of the alphabet will begin with a quote.

I consider myself somewhat of a word nerd and grammar geek, which is why this book interested me when I saw it at a book review site. However, the topics the publisher chose aren't necessarily the most important things to know if you want/need a language reference. On top of this, I would argue that some things she states are just wrong or simply her opinion (so other language lovers could have a very different but still valid opinion). In places, the book certainly feels too politically correct, something I've never been a fan of.

This is certainly a book where the author should have included a PDF to accompany the audiobook. Audible offers this as an option, and I believe more nonfiction authors should take advantage of this. Audiobooks are generally significantly more expensive than the eBook version, so it's no big deal for the author to include it as a boon to their audiobook listener. Publishers and authors should certainly weigh whether their information is more visual than auditory, as is the case in this book, and should include a PDF along with the audiobook when it would help their listeners understand what they are trying to get across. For this book, a full PDF of the entire book would be best, though even just the parts where she spells out words or the exercises would have been fine, too. But to have no PDF with this very visual book is just wrong and an impediment to the listener.