It tells you what you may not be very used to talking about!
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This is my first David Crystal book. I know he's a "big" man in a linguistics field, but this book doesn't really show that he is; he's trying to make the book look not too formal. He enjoys telling what he writes, he keeps himself from sounding too institutionalized, and consequently readers shouldn't be annoyed about the proverbial pomposity that is always intimidating to lay-readers. It's quite "entertaining", indeed. His sense of humor is fine. You don't have to read from cover to cover. Just let the book open itself at every casual reading. One thing that might have helped the book to be a bit more reader-friendly: the INDEX section could be more extensive; e.g. you see on the blurb "the fate of the letter T in 'often'", but no entry related to the subject is in the INDEX and I have yet to come across the part explaining it. Aside from this small drawback, it's definitely beneficial for you to know what you don't really notice in everyday communication. And the book tells you that!
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