<p>It’s run by several linguists and while some of it is a bit technical, it’s mostly quite accessible to the layman. If your son digs it, they have published a book taken from older entries.</p>
<p>There’s also an online computational linguistics competition every spring that may well appeal to him since he also likes math. Search on Language Log for details.</p>
<p>[ul] [li]The Hungry Scientist Handbook: Electric Birthday Cakes, Edible Origami, and Other DIY Projects for Techies, Tinkerers, and Foodies - Patrick Buckley[/li][li] How Language Works - David Crystal[/li] [li]Words Fail Me: What Everyone Who Writes Should Know about Writing - Patricia T. O’Conner[/li] [li] Word Play: What Happens When People Talk - Peter Farb[/li] [li] Secrets of Mental Math: The Mathemagician’s Guide to Lightning Calculation and Amazing Math Tricks - Arthur Benjamin[/li] [li] The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language - John Mcwhorter[/li] [li]Just Words: The Us and Them Thing - Val Dumond[/li] [li]Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World - Nicholas Ostler[/li] [li]The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (P.S.) - Steven Pinker[/li] [li]Master AP Chemistry - Peterson’s[/li] [li]Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition - Oliver Sacks[/li][li]Introduction to the Theory of Computation, Second Edition - Michael Sipser[/ul]</p>[/li]
<p>Musicophilia is for my husband for Christmas. Just because I have read nearly all of Sacks’s other books and want to read this one does not mean it’s mine. Really. Honestly, truly.</p>
<p>Really!</p>
<p>I don’t know that I’ll keep all of these in my cart – will depend on what my bank account tells me – but if one or more books isn’t purchased this time, it will stay in my cart for later!</p>
<p>I found the first edition of Sipser from an amazon third party merchant for around $15-20. Sipser has complete errata on his website, so I figured what the heck. You can save several bucks that way!</p>
<p>Looks like a fun cart! And I’m sure your husband will at least get to unwrap Musicophilia before it makes its way to your shelf…</p>
<p>Oliver Sacks is one of my favorite authors, and has been since I was in middle school. If you like his stuff, you might also want to check out Phantoms in the Brain by V.S. Ramachandran and The Midnight Disease by Alice Weaver Flaherty. Neither quite achieves the balance between humanistic detail and broad scientific insight as well as Sacks does, but both are very good reads! Though you might want to look for them at the library so your cart doesn’t get any bigger :)</p>
<p>Bumping this up for your holiday shopping ideas. :)</p>
<p>(Just ordered The Stuff of Thought, Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals, I-Language, Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory, Vanishing Voices: Extinction of the World’s Languages, Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language, and In Introduction to Language. Yes, the kid is getting books again this Christmas!)</p>