Last Book Syndrome: ‘Love and Other Foreign Words’ by Erin McCahan

by Clarissa Chua

I’m a big fan of language. That’s one of the reasons I found Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan adorable. Josie, the highly intelligent main character, finds comfort in words and the concrete meanings they hold.

“The single greatest word, of all languages in the world, is teepee. It comes from Siousx. I could be born into a family of French-speaking goat herders in the Swiss Alps and still know immediately what a teepee is the moment I hear the word. No confusion. Perfect clarity. It is the epitome of lingual greatness.

Teepee.

If only every language were as clear as Sioux.”

Another detail I loved about this book is the way Josie connected everything to math. Now that one’s quite foreign to me. Numbers already drive me insane so thinking about how she played~ with these amused me.

If you haven’t read this book, I recommend it if you want a light read! The funny, sarcastic and cute moments in this book will lift your spirits up!

Do you have Last Book Syndrome as well? Share it in the comments below. See you next Friday!

☁️

READ ALL LAST BOOK SYNDROME POSTS HERE.

July 17, 2015

Last Book Syndrome, Special Sections

Art, clarissa chua, erin mccahan, fiction, filipino creators, love and other foreign words, ya fiction

3 responses to “Last Book Syndrome: ‘Love and Other Foreign Words’ by Erin McCahan”

Nerie

July 22, 2015 at 3:00 pm

I love this book a lot.
It opens you to the idea of love in terms of language and math. When you think about it, love is like a language too. There’s all sorts of love with different meanings and interpretation.

This book also made me realize that we talk a certain way with different people in our lives, as well as different settings /scenarios. That even one word can mean differently depending on who you are talking to. I never thought much about it until I read this book. I recommend this for a light and feel good read. 🙂

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Clarissa

August 6, 2015 at 10:59 pm

Hello Nerie! I agree with you! Love is indeed a language, a very difficult language to decipher and learn though cause everyone has their own version of it. (Wow. Deep. Haha!) This book really is an eye opener and I’m quite amazed at how Erin McCahan made such a deep topic really light and relate-able.

Thanks for reading my Pillow Talk!

Lots of love,
Clarissa

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Last Book Syndrome: Lover’s Dictionary | bookbed

August 9, 2015 at 12:53 am

[…] And last but not the least, intertextuality. The word below seems like a comment to Erin McCahan’s comical view of the vagueness of words. […]

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