Through two locked gates, two miles down a gravel road, over the creek (dry, dry, dry) and up a little hill is a house with a room where I work. It looks like this:

This Sunday, the New York Times Book Review is going to mention Um... in Paperback Row. Here's the official write-up:

Um . . . : Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean, by Michael Erard. (Anchor, $14.95.) According to Erard, a journalist with an M.A. in linguistics, the average person commits 7 to 22 slips of the tongue each day and struggles to find the right word or name between two and four times. In this work of "applied blunderology," he argues that these mistakes illustrate the mind's dynamics and the way language works.

Received wisdom says you're not supposed to tangle with the NYTBR, but in this case, the mis-statement is so blatant, it would be uncouth NOT to mention it. Look at:

struggles to find the right word or name between two and four times.

Strictly speaking, the research says that older adults report a tip of the tongue experience an average of 2 to 4 times a week, as compared to younger adults, who self-report only 1 to 2 times. Sure, that's too much detail for a tiny paragraph. But without mentioning how much time it takes to have those 2 to 4 incidents, the statement is utterly meaningless.

Whoever wrote and edited this, bravo for making a muck of it.

At least I still have my health. And my credentials, which they so lovingly caress.

I once accidentally left the manuscript of Um... on the porch overnight. In the morning it looked like this:

Because I believe in open source, public domain, commons-based peer production, and gift economies, I posted an entry back in May sounding off about a book I'd bought that treated intellectual property (including mine) badly.

Well, the author got in touch, because he thought I had overstated my case, and asked me to change my original posting. So I examined his materials again, and found even more instances where he was putting his own copyright on and selling material that was neither his to copyright or sell. After some back and forth, he saw the error of his ways, and he agreed to remove all this stuff. I've updated my original post my original post.

In general, I think it's a wise book. Learning languages can't really be made easier, but learners can benefit from social support -- coaching, advice, kicks in the pants -- along the lines that Ultimate Language Secrets provides.

But why did it have to be so slickly marketed, buried in cheesy typography, and presented in that Dance of the Seven Veils way? Just sell me the product without Free Offers! and Additional Value! and whatever. I also felt it was sleazy to be automatically signed up by some email marketer when I made my final purchase online. Yes, I could unsubscribe. And yes, educational materials are marketed. But this website miscalculates the audience for this product.

What is Um...? It's a natural history of verbal blunders. It's a history of verbal fluency and the people who pursue it. It tells the story of famous types of slips like the spoonerism, the Freudian slip, the malapropism, and the Bushism. As a hardcover, it went into three printings, and it was reviewed by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.

As of today, Um... is also available as a paperback! But what's new isn't just a softer cover. Inside is a new afterword with up-to-date reporting on brand new scientific research that seeks to unlock the mysteries of slips and the brain. This research (including a report on errors by Kanzi, the bonobo -- yes, that's right, a bonobo) was all published after the hardcover was already in press.

Also in the new afterword, I analyze some of the slips and stumbles in recent American politics, focusing on the Obama/Osama malapropism that media commentators and politicians -- on all sides -- have been making. As long as we have public speakers, we'll have public blunders, and Um... is the only book that will tell you why they happen.

The website www.umthebook.com has reviews, news, and information about readings, interviews, and appearances.

I should really put these in a separate, permanent section on my website, the other books I've had stuff published in. Until then, here they are, in chronological order:

An essay about the meanings of the end of the millennium, based on interviews I did during the summer of 1995 in Alpine, Texas:

I had given up writing fiction when my short story, "Beyond the Point," (first published in the North American Review) was selected for this anthology:

A piece I wrote for Legal Affairs about "linguistic profiling" was reprinted in this linguistics textbook:

With Denise Schmandt-Besserat, I wrote a chapter on the history (and future) of writing:

Official release date: August 12, 2008

My essay, about life and leaving Texas, appears in the books issue of The Texas Observer. It's also the last issue for my friend and editor, Jake Bernstein, who moves on from the Observer, where he did great things, to ProPublica, where he'll do great things, I'm sure.

I've been a contributing writer for the Observer since 1999 through four waves of editors and massive changes in my own life; it's one of the constants, a rock. How fitting that a publication, less so a place, would be a pivot point for me.

My essay on the future of English in China is in the July issue of Wired. What if examples of Chinglish ("please omnivorously put the waste in garbage can") aren't really bad English? What if they are evidence that the English language is happily leading a secret life without us? (For some reason Wired editors changed "secret life" to "alternative lifestyle" -- maybe a California thing?)

And the erotic photo (to a bibliophile, anyway) that accompanied the essay: