Vera Arkadyevna Milchina is a leading researcher at the Institute of Higher Humanitarian Studies of the Russian State University and the School of Topical Humanitarian Studies of the RANEPA, author of seven books and three hundred scientific articles, translator and commentator of French writers of the first half of the XIX century. In a word, it would seem, a solid person. However, in the new book, she departs from the usual role and performs in an unexpected genre, for which she came up with a special name — memoirisms. Memoirisms are not a thorough, serious story about one's own life from birth to adulthood and/or old age. This is a series of short and, as a rule, funny sketches. The heroes of the "memoirs" are serious and famous people: Mikhail Bakhtin, Georgy Knabe, Vladimir Toporov, Omri Ronen and others. But they all appear in an unusual perspective. And besides, there are stories about how people bought and "got" books in Soviet times, about how Soviet censors fought sedition, about the French who came to the Soviet Union, and about the Jesuit Slavists who taught Russian in France. The main character of the book is a language and a language game. Most and the best part of the stories told is devoted to words — spoken, heard, printed, appropriate and inappropriate, accurate and inaccurate, joking and serious