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At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson’s At Home: A Short History of Private Life was a fascinating read about the history of the author’s own rural house, a former rectory built in 1851. Using each room (and even hallways and staircases), Bryson explores the history of such seemingly banal topics from fashionable colours of paint to the Erie Canal and how houses as we know them evolved.
Bryson also postulates the etymology of words and phrases like ‘sleep tight’ (as mattresses rested on taut ropes that would eventually sag) and ‘barking mad’ (people who ate poisoned rye grain suffered from ergotism, a sickness with symptoms of delirium and a bark-like cough). He even explores the possibility that the word ‘loo,’ the British term for bathroom, might have come from the French phraise ‘un lieu a l’anglaise.’
I remember reading an etymology book in Grade 6 and thought it was terribly boring. We read about the history of the word ‘corduroy,’ and an American boy in my class brought his corduroy pants in to show as an example. I thought that was silly, at the time, but since we were living in the 45C weather of Saudi Arabia, no one really wore corduroy. And looking back, now, I think I would actually find that book fascinating, as I do Bill Bryson’s At Home: A Short History of Private Life.
