Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

For those who love the English language for its richness and sheer diversity of definitions, this is potentially the next best thing to reading the OED yourself: a compendium of obscure highlights from the great tome.Just don't expect much of a story. The author pauses to reflect, muse, and meander frequently. Nonetheless, the highlights of Shea's book are the words and definitions themselves. For the author has exhaustively scanned the great tome looking for words that define things which he'd found particularly engrossing to himself. That is to say, Shea "collects words" a hobby which he describes as being "largely useless". That being so, it wasn't quite so useless, as he skilfully managed to develop his hobby into an enjoyable book for those who share his lexical passions. Thus sharing his love of obscure definitions, I repeatedly found myself delving back for more samplings of cherished rarities from the lexical arcanum.Thus we find, e.g., "heterodogmatize: to have an opinion different from the one generally held". Once defined, he then attempts a little humour which admittedly (as Shea is no Ambrose Bierce) falls flat on its face more often than not: "Just because you are in proud possession of opinions which differ markedly from the majority...is no reason to start patting yourself of the back. Usually, it just means you are wrong." Well boom boom to that. That being said, his occasionally awkward attempts at humour are entirely forgiveable, insofar as he has produced a most commendable sampling of rare & obscure words whose definitions are usually amusing enough in themselves without Shea's 'help' to inject humour any further.For lovers of the English language, who've not had sufficient time to browse the OED's entirety, this is a most worthwhile book. Albeit, please take my review with the caveat that many others would not warm to it as much as this reviewer did. For this book is certainly not one for anyone who holds a casual indifference towards their mother tongue.

An amusing story of a man who actually reads the entire OED. Along the way, he suffers pain, eyesight loss, and discovers the meaning of lots of obscure words. Who on earth are the guardians of the English language, and how do they busy themselves with ensuring that the rest of us who use it, use the correct words? Find out in this book, and quite a bit besides.

An excellent book which details one man's relationship with the OED and how it impacted on his life. He also picks out the best words from all the volumes so that we don't have to do it ourselves.

Absolutely fascinating - love advocitate - could apply to mother in laws!!!

I learnt my first a b c when I just turned 4.5 years old. At that time I found this foreign language so different from Cantonese and written Chinese, my mother tongue. And when I reached Primary 3, I started to learn how to use dictionary and I fell in love with it and with words. Since then, I spent pretty much time on the dictionary. Yet, some classmates laughed at my doing so and said something very, very hurtful (one of them, even after some 30 years now still thinks it is laughable.) This morning, on a certain webpage, I saw this book, no matter what I'll secure a copy as my tribute to Mr Shea and also his girlfriend. Nothing risible, ridiculous or laughable about reading dictionary. My 100% support to it. More later after I read it.By the way, I am a translator now.

I tried to take this book slowly, savouring a letter each time I picked it up: but failed -- I'd read the chapters for 3, 4 or 5 letters everytime I returned to this most wonderfully written and engaging book.Ammon Shea takes us not only into the pages of the Oxford English Dictionary with some superb words, but, in a humorous and captivating manner, we enter his life and his love of words, dictionaries, libraries, coffee and everything in between. We also get insights into the crea ...more I tried to take this book slowly, savouring a letter each time I picked it up: but failed -- I'd read the chapters for 3, 4 or 5 letters everytime I returned to this most wonderfully written and engaging book.Ammon Shea takes us not only into the pages of the Oxford English Dictionary with some superb words, but, in a humorous and captivating manner, we enter his life and his love of words, dictionaries, libraries, coffee and everything in between. We also get insights into the creation of dictionaries, which I found fascinating -- and will look at the books on on the OED he recommended at the end.A great read, for word-lovers in particular but I think for all who love a good read too.

A thoroughly enjoyable read, but perhaps a tad too short. That said, had it been much longer, then I might not have read it in a day. Does that qualify me to write a book about reading Ammon Shea's book in a day I wonder?

This was bought for a freind, and in some ways we wish we hadn't bought it - she won't stop talking about it!