Reading the OED – Ammon Shea

$5.58 at Amazon.com

Buy it if: You are feeling temporarily nerdy

Don’t buy it if: You’ve always shunned the reference section of the library

Despite being osculable, I am still subtrist, but nothing gets me going in the morning like a good pandiculation. And now I finally have the vocabulary to say it.

There may not be a more exhaustive work of academia in the modern world than the Oxford English Dictionary. (The definition of ‘Yet’ runs 60,000 words, 13,000 more than the The Great Gatsby.) Compared to the relatively miniscule collegiate dictionary you had sitting on your desk in high school, the OED is a monstrosity of wordage. Weighing in a 150 pounds and spread out over 20 volumes, it would doubtless strain any study surface upon which it was placed.

But for Ammon Shea, a habitual reader of dictionaries (I know, and you thought I was super nerdy…) it wasn’t simply enough to keep this dictionary for reference. So, like a stodgy and sedate version of Julie (Julie and Julia) Powell, he set out to read his way through the entire ‘book.’ All 21,730 pages of it.

The result is Reading the OED, a mini-memoir about the task, divided into 26 chapters, one for each letter of the alphabet. Each section is headed by a few pages about his actual experience, followed by a smattering of ‘selected’ (interesting, obscure or generally kooky) words from the OED, with each word being redefined and commented upon by the author.

My one wish for the book is that Shea would have chosen to simply focus on one approach or the other. Unfortunately, neither is fully explored…and either by itself would have made for far more compelling reading. Shea’s narrative is actually very humorous, detailing things like his massive coffee addiction, the curmudgeonly demeanor he affects en route to becoming a library dweller and the gradual decline of his vision. His self-deprecating style strikes the right tone for such a task and is entertaining, but the flow is constantly interrupted by each chapter’s word list.

This isn’t to say that the lists are unwelcome. In fact, Shea could probably make a go of being a professional satirist. The selections encompass a great cross-section of obscurity and yet, remarkably, I caught myself taking notes on words for later usage. And now I know that the next time a fox robs me of something, I’ll have been vulpeculated. If Shea were to release a more thorough volume, complete with ‘redefinitions’ and commentary, I would almost certainly make the purchase. It could be a fantastic alternative abridgment .

But, in the end, the book only half-succeeds at each task. If either of my imagined volumes were in the works by the author, I’d say hold out for the full-length memoir or ‘Shea-ized’ OED…but since it seems doubtful either are in the publishing pipeline, Reading the OED might be an appropriate alternative for someone with a passing interest in the subject. It’s a very fast read and – at 149 ½ pounds less than the original source material – far more suitable for airline travel.