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Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages
 
 
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Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages (Hardcover)

by Ammon Shea (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 240 pages
  • Publisher: Perigee Books (2 Jul 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0399533982
  • ISBN-13: 978-0399533983
  • Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14.5 x 2.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 425,754 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review
'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.' --New York Times

'the words Shea plucks from the Oxford English Dictionary are worth the price of the book on their own. Through them, we are able to create a host of readily identifiable characters, ranging from grinagogs to vicambulists.'
--Irish Times --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
'The perfect Christmas present ... The author's vignettes and mental wanderings are incisive and a pleasure to read, and make this book a must for sharing with the family around a roaring fire this Christmas ... Just make sure you're the one to have it to hand when you're playing Scrabble.' --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Here you'll find many obscure & forgotten gems, hidden deep within the OED, 2 Feb 2009
By Mr. T. White (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
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.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Bought for a freind, 31 Jan 2009
This review is from: Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages (Hardcover)
This was bought for a freind, and in some ways we wish we hadn't bought it - she won't stop talking about it!
Comment Comments (2) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


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