READING THE OED by Ammon Shea

I absolutely loved the conceit. Shea, who reads dictionaries for fun, read the entire twenty-one volume Oxford English Dictionary in one year, clocking ten hours a day of squinting at fine print. He read it, he says, "so you don't have to." In twenty-six chapters, he describes the process, and selects his favorite words for each letter of the alphabet. His commentary on the project, on language, on humanity and on himself is as acerbic as leaky battery fluid, brilliant and laugh aloud funny. The word entries are fascinating, as is the look into Shea's uber-bibliophilia. But the majority of this book is a lexicon, and I admit to skimming some of the entries. Not everyone likes reading dictionaries, as passionate as we may be about words.