English Bites by Manish Gupta: Book Review

English Language- My Piece of moon

Clearly I love this language.  Since my early schooling I loved English as a subject. No matter how many classes I’ve bunked in school but English was never on the list. I just could not let myself bunk English classes. While I was in class 9th and 10th and yeah 11th and 12th too I used to  hate English literature. I used to tell my teacher to make me speak on any topic she like, give me something to write and I will do it best way possible but, just do not make me read literature. I hated that. I still remember what nightmares the book Flamingo used to give me. Even in my secondary and senior-secondary exams I never used to study for literature part [25 marks]. I did not prepare a single word even while my board exams. I just used to keep my focus on other three sections. And the best part was I never had to study for those three sections too :).

Thankfully I never scored less than 75 in my English exams.  Moving forward when it came to college I had to opt for English Hons as my major. I NEVER wanted it. It just happened. May be it was destined. Till this point in my life my speaking skills were very good. But, when it came to writing I used to make many  mistakes. Punctuation marks and wrong sentence structure were major among them. Time moved on and so does my graduation. There was a lot to learn while doing English Hons, but they did not improve your basic mistakes. It was more about deep study of language itself.

Today when I write this I am good with English as a language. I am improving every moment. I am not ashamed to accept that I still make mistakes but, I am proud and happy that I have improved *THIS* much in recent years. And I continue to improve every day.

Let’s talk about the Book.

The book is a first person narration by Gupta. The book is his own story of mastering an alien language. The pace at which this book is been written is amazing. The transition is smooth and makes it a delight for any person to read this self-help book.

English Bites has to be one of the most well articulated book I’ve ever read. Especially when it is a self-help book. Saying that this book is an autobiography would not be wrong but Gupta is not acting a narcissist here. His attempt to write this ‘autobiography’ is wonderful.

This book takes you through a journey you would wish does not end. At some point this book is mesmerizing. If you love this language you would just do not want to stop. I would not hesitate to say that there is some magic in this book. But, to experience that magic you first need to love the language itself.

English Bites add a lot of words to your vocabulary, along with interesting trivia about the language. If you are deep in to language part you would love the origin of words given in the book. At times it may sound like a cumbersome task but at the end it is surely increasing your knowledge base to a greater extent.

The word meanings given at the footer of each page helps you to a greater extent. You would never need to take a look at dictionary. The book takes your language skills to a greater level and is a must read.

Suggestions

Learning language is always a pleasure. Enjoy reading this book instead of reading for the heck of it. I completed this book in a week or so but I am surely going to give it another read once again. This time reading one chapter a day.  This will help keeping the words in your mind and using then in your daily conversations.

About the Author

Manish Gupta is a banking professional. When not crunching numbers he is busy engaging with and examining the vagaries and idiosyncrasies of the English language. He also likes trivia, travelling, adventure sports, delving into human psychology, and giving professorial discourses to colleagues, family and friends, and practically anyone who can give him a patient hearing. An engineering graduate from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh and an MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur, he lives in Mumbai with his wife Deepali, a medical professional, and daughters Tamanna and Prakriti.