Jumping Sharks and Dropping Mics

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
—
WHAT'S DROPPING SHARKS AND DROPPING MICS ABOUT?
The subtitle pretty much tells you everything you need to know. This is a look at several idioms, expressions, and figures of speech that have entered common usage over since the latter half of the twentieth century.

The introductory chapter describes idioms and their usage, the various types of idioms, the history of a few not-modern examples, and so on. This chapter was great and I could've used a whole book on this topic. But that's something for a future library trip, I guess.

Following that we get chapters devoted to: Idioms from TV (including from commercials); Movies; The Internet (memes, hashtags, and so on); Sports; Modern Literature; and then a handful that have entered common usage without a tie to any of the rest, some from the news. that sort of thing.

Carrol talks about the origin and spread of each idiom, notable uses outside the source, and clarifies the meaning—and other commentary or trivia.

OH, IT'S THAT KIND OF ENGLISH...
Early on there was something in the back of my mind, like I was missing something. Then I ran across the phrase “TV advert,” and a lightbulb went on over my head. This book comes from the other side of the Atlantic, which is going to affect a little bit what idioms are used.

I'm not complaining or anything, I just had to tweak my expectations and go in knowing that there were going to be a few things I had no previous exposure to or that I'd be going into without the necessary frame of reference.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT JUMPING SHARKS AND DROPPING MICS?
The Sports chapter did nothing for me—most of that is my utter disinterest in the category, but a decent chunk of that is due to the number of cricket references. They might as well have been in Greek.

On the other end of the spectrum, as one might expect, the chapter devoted to Modern Literature was my favorite. Not just because of the page or two devoted to Douglas Adams, either. The section on The Right Stuff was a lot of fun.

There weren't a lot of idioms that were new to me, but there were a handful—I've tried them out a little bit in the few days since I read the book, I'm not sure they're going to stick, but you never know. It's fun to watch people try to suss out what I meant, at least.

The book was a lot of fun, I appreciated re-familiarizing myself with some of these phrases, and I learned a couple of things, too. It was an entertaining read and just the kind of thing that language nerds should really enjoy.