Globish: How the English Language Became the World’s Language
Robert McCrum
Penguin, £9.99
"Contagious, adaptable, populist and subversive": so Robert McCrum, associate editor of the Observer,summarises the English language. A "mongrel" product of many foreign invasions, English has become "Globish", the world's default tongue. This study is vast and enjoyable, and the language's barbaric story of imperialism, war, revolution and slavery is softened by its marvels: Chaucer and Shakespeare, the early printers and lexicographers, Huckleberry Finn, American mass media and the internet. There are notes of triumphalism when McCrum recounts the discovery of the New World or his visit to the Globish-speaking Silicon Valley of Bangalore. The term Globish remains slippery. It's not clear if Globish actually exists or if we like it. But the (for us) convenient truth is that English is spoken by a third of the world, and this, McCrum is convinced, is a good thing. Maggie Armstrong
Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
Clay Shirky
Penguin, £10.99
Cognitive surplus has been around for a long time, whether it was London's 18th-century gin craze or the popularity of TV sitcoms. We have always found ways to use our spare time. Only now we are doing it more productively. We are creating and contributing in ways that make a real world difference. The changes that Shirky has observed are facilitated by the internet, and the levels of freedom and scalability this has provided to everyone at no extra cost. Technology has caught up with human potential at last. Shirky explains his argument in seven sections, all of which are linked to real-life examples. From the collective efforts that go into editing Wikipedia to a Facebook group to make India safer for Hindu women to Josh Groban's fans establishing a charity that has raised more than $1 million. Shirky foresees that increased participation and productivity will change the world, and he just may be right. David Carter
The Secret History of Costaguana
Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Bloomsbury, £8.99
When Colombian exile Jose Altamirano tells his life story to a young Joseph Conrad, he doesn't expect to find the story published some months later as the first instalment of Conrad's 1904 novel, Nostromo,but Altamirano is devastated to realise that his name and history have been erased from the narrative. What follows is Juan Gabriel Vásquez's postmodern twist on the revenge story; our narrator, Altamirano, retells the real story of his native Colombia, as well as the "real" story of the seaman Conrad. Brilliantly translated by Anne McLean, the comic voice, direct addresses to the reader and pleonastic prose allow a complex narrator to remain both a cipher and incredibly likeable. Vásquez can be overly clever, at times satirising the conventions of Latin American magical realism, at others relying on such fantastical elements. This is an elaborate, self-reflexive novel, heavy on history and political strife – a fitting mirror to Colombia's complicated past and present. Emily Firetog
In a Strange Room
Damon Galgut
Atlantic Books, £7.99
This moving three-part reflection on loneliness and dislocation traces the footsteps of Damon, the South African author's wistful protagonist, as he traverses the globe, making profound but fleeting connections that ultimately end in heartbreak. Over the course of many years and many journeys without destination, he encounters a number of similarly fragile souls in whose company he sees the possibility of forging lasting bonds. Yet there is a chasm between Damon and the world around him that he can never bridge. The constant, aching melancholy of someone who longs for companionship, for love, but will never find it is explored through the novel's meditative, metronomic narration. Galgut's retrospective voice switches from the third to the first person at telling moments as pangs of still-raw pain betray the full weight of sorrow underneath the surface of his stoic account. The mournful ennui that afflicts all world-weary travellers at some point in their lives is embodied by this one sad, haunted figure. Dan Sheehan
Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris
Graham Robb
Picador, £9.99
In these intriguing stories, cut from true lives, Graham Robb risks old-time cliche and uncovers a Paris of bohemia, squalor, adultery and crime. He starts with a conspiracy, reconstructing Marie Antoinette's journey from the Tuileries before her beheading. He follows Tolstoy's impoverished secretary and his muse, a flower girl, around the Latin quarter, entering the grimy underworld of the press in 1894. Émile Zola's wife discovers the mistress and babies of her seemingly callous spouse, and Proust completes his magnum opus. The stories are richly steeped in the past, but end with a controversial glance at Nicolas Sarkozy, visiting the banlieues during the 2005 riots. This is not a holiday read, but it does make us want to go to Paris, as so many complex, suspenseful, quiet adventures are rendered in such vivid detail. Literary fans will enjoy its scandals, architects its meticulous charting of the city. Overall, Robb writes with the enchantment of a bridegroom as to his bride. Maggie Armstrong