Ammon Shea calls himself one of those, “Library People.” I’m familiar with them. They are the people who loiter in a library, constantly and forever. They are always there and no one can figure out why. All librarians have seen them. They seem to read, but no one knows what. Well at least one such individuals modus operandi has been identified. Shea in his book, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, admits to being such a person, the reason: his attempt to read through the entire 20 volumes of the OED within a year. He succeeds and lives to tell about it. The great survival story here is not in the reading, but in the sitting and in a library to boot. With the entire world spinning around outside I’m sure it requires a Herculean fortitude to sit in a library silently reading a dictionary. I suspect this is akin to the same amount of dedication required of a cloistered nun. And the task takes its toll; Shea begins to suffer from eyestrain, headaches and back pain. And then worse of all boredom sets in. But the fruit here is worth it. Not quite spiritual fruit, but a bit intellectual. In this book Shea provides a highlighted tour of his romp through the longest, most scholarly and comprehensive dictionary in the world. The bizarre concept of reading through a dictionary is not a novel one, but Shea actually did it. He divides his trip, (to overuse a metaphor), into 26 chapters, one for each letter of the alphabet. In each chapter he gives words that delighted and intrigued him. Not a novel plan, but workable. Shea ameliorates this pedestrian framework by starting each chapter with either a personal motivation or a history of one thing or another. And this all fits together well and becomes an interesting and informative read. Not all agree. A friend of mine called this book a cheap parlor trick. A stunt. I thought so too at first, but in the reading the book proved worthy. So if you’re the type that likes dictionaries and words, and etymologies and stuff, this thing is for you. You can add it to your collection of dictionaries. The most intriguing thought I took away from this book? How big is Shea’s vocabulary?
