Tag: Algospeak

My Favorite Non-Fiction Books of 2025

On January 7, 2026

In (Auto)Biography, History, News/Misc., Non-Fiction

My 2025 Wrap-up continues and now we’re on to the Non-Fiction list. While I liked a number of works that didn’t make this list, I felt strange calling them a “favorite.” These are the ones that stuck with me through the year; the ones I cited in conversation; that I thought about when reading something else or watching something on TV. Yeah, there’s some overlap between this list and the audiobook list from yesterday—lately, most Non-Fiction books I work through are in audiobook format. So it makes sense, even if it makes this post seem like an echo.

As always, I only put books that I’ve read for the first time on this list. I don’t typically return to NF books (outside of looking up things for one or three points), but occasionally I do—for example, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs would get a permanent spot on this list, were it not for this rule.

(in alphabetical order by author)

Algospeak:
How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language

by Adam Aleksic

My original post
Language in general—but English particularly—is a constantly-changing thing, and these changes are happening faster and faster all the time. Algospeak is a great look at the hows and whys of a lot of the current evolutionary processes. It is about more than language—it’s also about how the Internet changes the way we think and express ourselves in general. And therefore, how society changes (which leads to Internet changes, and other circle-of-life things).

Aleksic has obvious expertise and passion for the subject (look at just one of his videos). He’s also active in these areas. It’s a great read, informative and entertaining. Hard to ask for more.

Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass—How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up

by Dave Barry

My original post
It comes as no surprise to any that I loved a Dave Barry book. It takes something pretty lackluster by him to get that reaction (and he doesn’t do that often–but I can prove it if you want). But this is something else–it’s insightful, it’s touching, it’s (seemingly) honest, and human. It’s a look at his childhood, his professional humorist origin story, and then scattered accounts of some of the very strange things that his profession has let him do.

I don’t say this about many authors–but I really don’t know that I’ve wondered anything about Barry’s personal life. But now that I know? I am more than happy to get some understanding about it. Does it necessarily help me understand his work better? No (but we’ll see the next time I take up his work, I guess). But it makes me like Barry the person a bit more.

Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations

by Alton Brown

Like any good fan of a TV show/personality, I like to know how they got started, how the show was developed, etc. Brown talks about how he got into food education media–and it’s not really how you’d expect. How he moved on from Good Eats to other things. There’s some great stuff about his education. But perhaps the most rewarding portion of the book is his musing and observations on the place of food/eating to human society (writ large or on an individual level).

Really, there’s so little to not appreciate from this book. Alton Brown has spent decades thinking and writing about food. This is the result of all that.

Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

by Cory Doctorow

I don’t know how to talk about Doctorow’s screed against Big Tech, the policies that led to these platforms that have taken over the internet and made it less-good than it used to be. Even that sentence is not a great way to talk about the book. The book wowed me. I wouldn’t say it radicalized me on some of this, but I sort of wish it did. The Ressa book below really struck me as a giant proof for Doctorow’s case (good idea to read the two of them around the same time). It’s a great–and terrifying–read.

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

by John Green

I never imagined I would appreciate a book about an infectious disease. And despite all the good things I heard about this book, I didn’t rush to pick it up. But I’m so glad I did.

First of all, you could probably pick any number of things to use in place of Tuberculosis to trace human history, seemingly at major turning points and shaping societal developments. Say…bread, or writing, or…I dunno this is a sentence I regret starting. But from a certain point of view–you can buy the theory posited at the beginning of this book, that Tuberculosis shaped human history.

Green talks about the treatments that have been tried (and failed), the way it impacted population sizes, the devastation it’s left in it’s wake, and how things are going in the battle against the disease now. Interwoven with these is the story of one particular patient in Sierra Leone that Green met years ago. We follow his personal struggle–ups, downs, way downs, and more.

Green can relate these facts–even the bleak ones–in an engaging way that will stick with the reader. But then he drives it home and makes it gets you emotionally involved through the patient’s story.

You just can’t help but being taken in by the book and it’ll leave a lasting impression.

Killer Conversations with Rex Stout and John McAleer

My original post
Granted, there is a very limited audience for this kind of thing. But for that audience (and I’m part of it), this is catnip.

These snippets of conversations between Rex Stout and his biographer and friend are just wonderful. Quick back and forths on any number of topics–life, death, love, reputation, writing, Stout’s characters, his career, and more–it’s fun to read. It’s fun to think about. You’ll wish you were half as clever as Stout.

Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words

by John McWhorter

So, sure–this looks like it’s nothing but a screed on one side or the other about the problem we’re having with third-person pronouns the a socio-political front in English. And, yes, it is about that, (but only from a linguistic point of view), but there’s more to it. There’s also that pesky second-person plural.

Like in his book, Nine Nasty Words, McWhorter gives a quick look at the history of English pronouns one at a time–looking at various forms, usages, spellings, and assorted trivia. When appropriate, the then talks about some of the contemporary challenges and controversies with them.

Completely entertaining–McWhorter’s a great narrator–and very educating. I heartily commend this to you (no matter what you think of using “they” for the third-person singular).

How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future

by Maria Ressa, read by Maria Ressa & Rebecca Mozo

Maria Ressa’s story is fascinating. It’s just that simple. I mean, you rarely find a Nobel Peace Prize recipient without an interesting backstory of some sort.

Like I said above, when you add this to Doctorow’s book and you see how everything he said is entirely possible and how it can work against someone.

There’s, of course, more than just Ressa’s story and struggles reflected here. There’s a call to action, a call to do the necessary work, and a call to hope, when it comes to oppressive governments or platforms.

Are Women Human?

by Dorothy L. Sayers

These are two essays by Sayers on the subject of women in society–with a particular look at academia. They are pointed, clear, and witty.

I’m not sure what else to say, really.

Robert E. Lee and Me:
A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause

by Ty Seidule

My original post

This is a powerful read. This very-Southern, Lost Cause adherent, West Point history professor starts looking at what he’d been raised believing, and the systemic racism of the culture he’d been raised in. The book then recounts example after example after example of the racism everywhere and the excuses made for covering up the treason of the Confederacy everywhere, including the U.S. Army–the army he left and fought against.

I thought Seifert made a compelling case in an engaging read that will stick with you for a long time.

Algospeak by Adam Aleksic: A Simply Fascinating Look at Language’s Next Phases

By HCNewton

On August 8, 2025

In Non-Fiction

I don’t know if my spellchecks have featured so many red-squiggly lines before (well, ones that I’m keeping anyway). You’d think they’d be closer to the cutting-edge, no?

Algospeak:
How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language

by Adam Aleksic

DETAILS:
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: July 15, 2025
Format: eARC
Length: 256
Read Date: July 12-22, 2025

What’s Algospeak About?

I can’t do a decent job of summarizing this (I’ve tried), so I’m just going to paste the Publisher’s Description.

From “brainrot” memes and incel slang to the trend of adding “-core” to different influencer aesthetics, the internet has ushered in an unprecedented linguistic upheaval. We’re entering an entirely new era of etymology, heralded by the invisible forces driving social media algorithms. Thankfully, Algospeak is here to explain. As a professional linguist, Adam Aleksic understands the gravity of language and the way we use it: he knows the ways it has morphed and changed, how it reflects society, and how, in its everyday usage, we carry centuries of human history on our tongues. As a social media influencer, Aleksic is also intimately familiar with the internet’s reach and how social media impacts the way we engage with one another. New slang emerges and goes viral overnight. Accents are shaped or erased on YouTube. Grammatical rules, loopholes, and patterns surface and transform language as we know it. Our interactions, social norms, and habits—both online and in person—shift into something completely different.

As Aleksic uses original surveys, data, and internet archival research to usher us through this new linguistic landscape, he also illuminates how communication is changing in both familiar and unexpected ways. From our use of emojis to sentence structure to the ways younger generations talk about sex and death (see unalive in English and desvivirse in Spanish), we are in a brand-new world, one shaped by algorithms and technology. Algospeak is an energetic, astonishing journey into language, the internet, and what this intersection means for all of us.

The Best Parts for Me

After the Introduction sets up the book and the reason for it—Aleksic traces the use of language to get around censorship back quite a ways—at least back to the use of grawlix and the like.

He also talks about things like rhyming cockney or leetspeak, how both use a sense of play to get around censorship or monitoring—as such, they’re precursors to Algospeak. Which is really just another form of slang that spreads just like all other forms of slang before it—through people talking to one another in person or through the media. That just happens on a faster and larger scale now than it used to.

What I found really compelling was the way he demonstrated the two primary sources for dominant Algospeak—4chan’s (and the like) channels and memes, and African-American English. It almost seems impossible for those two sources could produce something together, but Aleksic makes a compelling case for it.

The last chapter in total is worth the price of admission—but subsections discussing the “purity” of language that’s being shaken by these developments, and the new kinds of dialects emerging, etc., are just gold. It’s the kind of thing that I’ll return to again.

Not Sure this Really Helped

Starting in Chapter 3, “No Because What Happened to Your Attention?”, Aleksic spends a good deal of time in several chapters discussing the nitty-gritty aspects of getting TikTok’s/YouTube Shorts’/Instagram Reels’ algorithms to feed individual users certain types of short-form videos, and how creators work to get their videos to be fed to the largest amount of likely engagers. He discusses how word choice, speed of speech, how long it takes for a voice to start, camera movements, etc., etc. all play a role in this.

Yes, he does end up applying this to “How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language,” in each chapter. But it often seemed more like he was giving tips on how his readers could be better at getting attention for their own short-form videos/accounts (often using himself as a case study) than in discussing linguistic evolution. I was wrong each time I started to wonder about that. Nevertheless, I did.

That said…I found it great reading and more interesting than I might have just described it. There’s just so much of this that I’ve never thought about—or even realized I could think about. For someone who cut his teeth on Windows 3.11, 28.8k modems, and Usenet forums, I find a lot of this mind-boggling (and kind of cool, even if it does make me feel positively paleolithic).

So, what did I think about Algospeak?

A couple of years ago, my daughter got me hooked on the Instagram account of @etymologynerd, and his rapid-fire insightful (and fun) glances at word origins so on. So when I saw that he’d gone analog and produced a book, I just had to check it out (the book’s description helped, too). And I’m so glad I picked this up—and think you will be, too.

It’s because of this book that I publicly defended the use of “unalive” as a verb the other day. I can honestly say that I’d never expected that to happen. That right there is probably a huge endorsement for the book, I’m not sure what else I can say to match that for this stodgy stick-in-the-mud who still isn’t sure about using “contact” as a verb.

I found this whole discussion fascinating—sure, the bits about various speeds of talking depending on the type of influencer you are seem odd and too technical for me—but when Aleksic shows how this spills over into not just wider online speech, but into offline language use, it becomes worth it.

More than that, the chapters that are primarily focused on language development and how online use is shaping that (whether in text or video format), it’s like popcorn—I’ll shove handful after handful of that into my mouth without noticing that’s what I’m doing.

It’s entertainingly written, too. Aleksic’s passion for this kind of discussion comes through loud and clear. It’s not nearly as infectious as his videos are, but it’s close (of course, he can’t tweak the pace, volume, or anything else about the way that I read the way he can with his videos—so it makes sense). I do wonder how this would come across in audiobook—but I think you’re going to want the print version to slow down over some of the math.

This is about more than language—it’s also about how the Internet changes the way we think and express ourselves in general. And therefore, how society changes (which leads to Internet changes, and other circle-of-life things).

If you’re on the fence—read the Introduction and the closing chapter—and you’ll likely be convinced that you should read everything in between. Language in general—but English particularly—is a constantly-changing thing, and these changes are happening faster and faster l the time. With the tools provided in Algospeak, you can start to see some of this change in realtime—and that’s a gift in itself.

Language nerds—go get this. Other readers might want to check it out—and get started on becoming a language nerd.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from Knopf via NetGalley—thanks to both for this. Sorry it’s up late.

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, the opinions expressed are my own.