The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations : The Complete Opinionated Guide for the Careful Speaker

This is a great source for discovering the proper pronunciation of popular words in the English language. Many people don't realize they are pronouncing some words incorrectly. If you enjoy language and are a person who attends to fine details when it comes to the contemporary use of language, you will enjoy this source.

As a curious person who enjoys language, I found this book enlightening.

It's not pro-NOUN-see-AY-shin. It's pruh-NUHN-see-AY-shin. Open this book at random and learn something. Deluge is "DEL-yooj (like dell plus huge without the h)." Demur is di-MUR, not di-MYOOR. "Pronounce mur as in murder, not as in mural." Once it's in your reference library you'll wonder how you ever got along without it.

I realize language changes over time, and eventually new ways of pronouncing words are adopted. However, there are still a lot of words that seem to confuse people. I have even seen people argue over it.
This book has "proper" pronunciations of English words. While I wouldn't go as far as he does pronouncing words adopted from other languages, I definitely get irritated when people don't use their "native" language properly.

The name of this book is what caught my eye, but, as soon as I opened it, I realized how great it is. I learned of quite a few mistakes I make, and often WHY. The author's somewhat ranting tone makes an otherwise dense and boring subject a bit more approachable. I highly recommend this book.

[...]. the author's rules are, indeed, entirely arbitrary.
simply performing a mental utterance of many of his "proper" pronunciations affected me as strongly as a fingernail on a blackboard.
i take particular exception to his endorsement of the mutilation of the many japanese words that have found their way into our vocabulary.
for the most part, our alphabet is capable of approximating japanese words. as in spanish borrowed words, where one shouldn't be expected to trill the "r", (i loved the reference to the saturday night live sketch with jimmy smits!) the pronunciation can be anglicized, but i don't understand his endorsement -- and sometimes origination -- of whimsically swapping out entire syllables.
i can guess what he considers to be the correct pronunciations of "tokyo" and "kyoto". but i assure you, each of these words have TWO syllables -- not THREE, not FIVE.
additionally, (and i may be in a minority here) i'm bothered by his overweening love of the schwa, with which he replaces almost every instance of a short vowel in an unstressed syllable, thus endorsing an inarticulate mush-mouthed uh-mur-uh-cun-uh-zay-shun of the language and his erratic syllable division greatly reduces the already shrinking list of words which have etymologically sound pronunciations.