This is a fun, informal collection of idioms from a few different languages, including Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, and German. I say informal because the author isn't any sort of linguistic expert, and he admits to not even being 100% sure as to the accuracy of all the idioms, or their rate of current usage and relevance. However, the book is very well organized, easy to read, and is a great source for a number of more "technical" books and articles about language and idioms. Bhalla admits that the book is more for entertainment than educational purposes (i.e., don't rely on it when really learning another language), and I think it lives up to this expectation just fine.I must admit to being a little disappointed at first that the book isn't more technical, but I eventually got over it and came to appreciate it as a fun reference, perhaps one that I could take examples from the next time I teach English idioms. The only thing that consistently bothered me about the book was that sometimes I had a hard time following the organization of the start-of-chapter introductions. Different paragraphs don't always flow well from one to the next, and the author seems to ramble on sometimes before finally delving into the idioms themselves. Overall, it's certainly not the best thing I've ever read, but for a book comprised mostly of lists and intended for informal use, I can't complain too much.
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