Hard to Recommend a Book. . .


August 20th, 2012

. . . when you cannot remember the title.

I forgot the name of a book that I was attempting to recommend while on a panel Sunday morning at Gen Con. Well, here it is, for anyone interested:

English Through The Ages by William Brohaugh is basically a chronological list of words broken up by category. Need to know if your assassin can use a garrote (not until 1855–though he could certainly garrote someone as far back as 1625)? Maybe you’re not sure if that biologist should really be called that (not until 1875) or if she’d refer to herself as being homeothermic or not (if she’s working after 1870, then yes!).

By avoiding words that do not fit the historical period the world of your story is set in or based on, you help to create a more realistic and immersive experience for the reader.

  1. Disclosure: If you purchase a book from the above links within a certain amount of time of clicking on it, I will earn a small portion of the sale. That does not affect my recommendations, though. For more information, see the full affiliate disclosure.

  1. This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2012 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Reviews, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.


2 thoughts on “Hard to Recommend a Book. . .”

  1. Alan Edwards says:

    Thanks for the link – your description made it sound like an excellent reference, even for a fantasy writer. Of course, I was so groggy Sunday morning I didn’t have a pen anyway, so it actually helps me that you didn’t remember, heh.

    1. W. H. Horner says:

      You’re welcome, Alan! It’s definitely a great book for fantasy writers because it’s easy to allow modern words and concepts to enter our writing even when we’re working in a setting based on a particular historical time period. It helps to create that feeling of realism if we avoid doing so.

      Thanks for stopping by!

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