Read anything that you think sounds interesting - some of the more ‘pop’ linguistics books are always good as a starter.
Imogen
It's a good idea to do some introductory reading in Linguistics to find out more about what the subject involves. There are no required books that you must have read, however if you are looking for suggestions, you may find the following helpful:
- David Crystal, The Cambridge encyclopedia of language (1997)
- David Crystal, How language works (2006)
- David Crystal, The Stories of English (2004)
- Gretchen McCulloch, Because Internet (2019)
- Peter Trudgill and Laurie Bauer, Language Myths (1998)
- Gaston Dorren, Babel: Around the world in twenty languages (2018)
- Jean Aitchison, The Articulate Mammal (2011 edition)
- David Adger, Language Unlimited (2019)
- Collection of essays by many linguists, The 5-Minute Linguist (2019)
If you would like to explore some of the topics in Linguistics further, a longer reading list is available on the Faculty website. This page of "All Things Linguistic" also have some good reccomendations of linguistics books, with a line or two about what each covers.