Product Description

An obsessive word lover’s account of reading the Oxford English Dictionary cover to cover.

“I’m reading the OED so you don’t have to. If you are interested in vocabulary that is both spectacularly useful and beautifully useless, read on...”

So reports Ammon Shea, the tireless, word-obsessed, and more than slightly masochistic author of Reading the OED. The word lover’s Mount Everest, the OED has enthralled logophiles since its initial publication 80 years ago. Weighing in at 137 pounds, it is the dictionary to end all dictionaries.

In 26 chapters filled with sharp wit, sheer delight, and a documentarian’s keen eye, Shea shares his year inside the OED, delivering a hair-pulling, eye-crossing account of reading every word, and revealing the most obscure, hilarious, and wonderful gems he discovers along the way.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21192 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Review
"Oddly inspiring.…This is the Super Size Me of lexicography….Shea has walked the wildwood of our gnarled, ancient speech and returned singing incomprehensible sounds in a language that turns out to be our own.”
—Nicholson Baker, New York Times Book Review

About the Author
Ammon Shea is the author of two previous books on obscure words, Depraved English and Insulting English (written with Peter Novobatzky). He read his first dictionary, Merriam Webster’s Second International, ten years ago, and followed it up with the sequel, Webster’s Third International.

Customer Reviews

Porno For Bibliophiliacs
If this book was in any way meant to be a subliminal commercial for the Oxford English Dictionary (All Hail Its August Name!) it worked, because after reading this I forked over megabucks for my own set: and during a recession, too, go figger. This story of one man's obsessive love of dictionaries and his veritable marriage to the OED brought back enjoyable memories of A.J. Jacobs' The Know It All, in which the similarly driven A.J. spent a year reading the Encyclopedia Britannica. The comparisons between Jacobs and Ammon Shea largely end there but in each case there was an excitement and love of challenge and books that drove both men to do what they did, and that enthusiasm is catching (as my much-reduced bank account shows, oy vey).

Being one part biography, one part diary, one part bite-sized review of the largest and most comprehensive lexicon in the known universe, Reading The OED delivers an alpha thru zed sampling of words found in the glorious twenty-volume, 21,000-page tribute to the English language. Some words Mr. Shea selects are quaint and archaic, while others are puzzling, impressive, useful, and even hilarious. You can read this book to learn or merely to tag along as its author's addiction to dictionaries threatens to turn him into one of the dreaded "library people" (gasp!) and compels him to formulate intricate strategies for both privacy and time to keep up with the self-set task of reading the entirety of the mighty OED.

This is a charming, simple, straightforward and yet intellectually pleasing book that left me glad I read it, even if it also left me financially lightened.

Great book for word geeks
Hilarious and well-written, this book is great for word geeks everywhere. I've already used "storge" in general conversation!

reading the oed
This is a great book not only for those who love their dictionaries or own an OED, which seem to be the people who have reviewed this book so far. I neither love my dictionary** I own my mom's from high-school and i read it to fall asleep** nor do i own a single volume of the OED, the last time i even saw a copy of the OEd was the condensed version at my high-school library.
What makes this a great fascinating and entertaining book to read is the words that Shea choose to highlight, his version of the definitions and his experience of reading the OED. For a book about words that could have been dull and boring i found myself laughing and giggling through passages. I will probably never use any of the words inside the book but i'm amused that i know them and could.