Reading for longer visits
Shoot the Puppy: A Survival Guide to the Curious Jargon of Modern Life
by Tony Thorne
Image courtesy of Amazon.co.uk
At BITB we try to push the envelope to get high ROI by e-footfall without opening our kimono to rival bloggers, and using post-bleeding edge technology to nanopublish on a monthly basis.
If that means anything to you, you might need to get out more. If it means nothing, you need this book.
Tony Thorne, author of Shoot the Puppy: A survival guide to the curious jargon of modern life, has collected over 300 pages of terms like 'thoughtshower' (we're not allowed to say 'brainstorm' any more), 'metrosexual' (urban hetrosexual male, with gay tastes), 'diarize' (to agree a schedule jointly) and many other, often bizarre, often cringeworthy, new words in the business and media lexicon.
BITB are usually massive fans of etymological guides, but for some reason this one seems to miss the mark. A large number of the terms come from the business world, many from new media and technology, as a result don't have a great deal of depth or history to make them interesting beyond "what sort of t*sser would say this in IRL (in real life)?". BITB also questions the definition of a few - beta release, the book suggests, means a release which is already obsolete. Being a software developer, beta release, I'd say, means an early or unready version, not already obselete.
In terms of a book for the loo - it satisfies the criteria - hardback, handy size, wipeable dust jacket and its dictionary style format means you can dip in and out, but I found myself not being massively engaged by the content enough to keep going back. I'll perhaps use it as a reference when someone asks me to implement a quadruple play in a meeting, but its unlikely i'll be carrying it around as my guide to impress.
Matthew Knight