Recently Karen Chung (Taipei, Taiwan) has posted on linguistlist an updated list of popular science, easy-to-read books on linguistics. The original list from 1994 had been compiled by Edith Moravcsik. The list contains usual suspects like Pinker’s The Language Instinct and Crystal’s popular science publications. But there is also some fictional writing on it, including Shaw’s Pygmalion and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings). In between these there are many other interesting-sounding booktitles, well-known and lesser known.
The one I am certainly going to get in the near future is David Carkeet (1980; 2010) Double Negative: A Novel. What a thrilling title!
If you have read books from that list or would like to share your own favorite “bedtime reading in linguistics”, just leave a comment!