Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages
by Ammon Shea
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List Price: $21.95
Our Price: $10.96
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Manufacturer: Perigee Trade
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 423.028
EAN: 9780399533983
ISBN: 0399533982
Label: Perigee Trade
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: 2008-07-02
Publisher: Perigee Trade
Studio: Perigee Trade
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Porno For Bibliophiliacs
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great book for word geeks
Comment: Hilarious and well-written, this book is great for word geeks everywhere. I've already used "storge" in general conversation!
Customer Rating:
Summary: reading the oed
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I don't believe it!!
Comment: OK, I gave this book 5 stars, because I didn't read it, and did not want my critical comment to detract from what was perhaps an honest effort.
But I own the OED, and I personally do not see how someone can simply go forward and read every definition, quote (many of which are written in Old English and almost impossible to decipher), and sense of simple words in ONE YEAR. That's about 60 pages a day. Now I LOVE my OED, and I have spent hours poring over its glorious and mysterious words and scholarly source quotes. But people, we are talking about 21,730 pages of hard-core word definitions and quotes! That's gotta be some world record.
How do we KNOW he read it? Just because he lifted a few words, and sounds
rather geeky? I think he's just trying to sell a book. And as much as I love the OED, it does not have all the joys and sorrows of a story or book, as Shea says. I wonder what words made him cry? The OED is intense, deep, intellectual and challenging. One can learn about the history of language and peoples by reading the OED. But for Shea to claim that it evokes the same emotions as great literature makes me wonder about this man's past reading accomplishments.
So, although it is exciting for us word buffs to think that someone read the whole OED in a year, I just don't buy it. As I said, much of the early quotes are lifted from Old or Middle English, and therefore did Shea "skim" these, or did he try and figure out what "Quarn he carmen be, wimen or barn" meant? I say he skimmed a lot. Or just read over things he could not possibly understand. Also, the pronunciation guide to my OED has about 50 characters in it (most of which are schwa-like sounds), so I wonder if Shea memorized the characters or made a cheat-sheet (like me)? And though I'm a bit jealous as his being able to afford a brand-new OED ($900 retail) and have a whole year off to read it, I don't let
that interfere with my sincere disbelief at his accomplishing, in any meaningful way, what he said he has done. Just like someone claiming to have seen a UFO, there is no test, or court of law, to hold him accountable to the truth of what he says; we are simply to believe him. I really want to believe him, but I've read the OED for hours, and I know what it's like. So I don't.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Walk (Through the Dictionary) Not Spoiled!
Comment: Shea produces here a very entertaining and enlightening glance at both a dictionary that is so large that many homes don't have a shelf that can hold it all as well as a glimpse into the madness of someone crazy enough to want to read such a book. Sure, you'll learn a few new words and laugh at a lot of words that you didn't know existed, but at the same time you see the workings of a human being who's excited by an activity which many would consider the definition of "boring". The author injects the dictionary with personality and intrigue, and it makes for a very good, quick read. Absolutely worth your time.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Porno For Bibliophiliacs
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great book for word geeks
Comment: Hilarious and well-written, this book is great for word geeks everywhere. I've already used "storge" in general conversation!
Customer Rating:
Summary: reading the oed
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I don't believe it!!
Comment: OK, I gave this book 5 stars, because I didn't read it, and did not want my critical comment to detract from what was perhaps an honest effort.
But I own the OED, and I personally do not see how someone can simply go forward and read every definition, quote (many of which are written in Old English and almost impossible to decipher), and sense of simple words in ONE YEAR. That's about 60 pages a day. Now I LOVE my OED, and I have spent hours poring over its glorious and mysterious words and scholarly source quotes. But people, we are talking about 21,730 pages of hard-core word definitions and quotes! That's gotta be some world record.
How do we KNOW he read it? Just because he lifted a few words, and sounds
rather geeky? I think he's just trying to sell a book. And as much as I love the OED, it does not have all the joys and sorrows of a story or book, as Shea says. I wonder what words made him cry? The OED is intense, deep, intellectual and challenging. One can learn about the history of language and peoples by reading the OED. But for Shea to claim that it evokes the same emotions as great literature makes me wonder about this man's past reading accomplishments.
So, although it is exciting for us word buffs to think that someone read the whole OED in a year, I just don't buy it. As I said, much of the early quotes are lifted from Old or Middle English, and therefore did Shea "skim" these, or did he try and figure out what "Quarn he carmen be, wimen or barn" meant? I say he skimmed a lot. Or just read over things he could not possibly understand. Also, the pronunciation guide to my OED has about 50 characters in it (most of which are schwa-like sounds), so I wonder if Shea memorized the characters or made a cheat-sheet (like me)? And though I'm a bit jealous as his being able to afford a brand-new OED ($900 retail) and have a whole year off to read it, I don't let
that interfere with my sincere disbelief at his accomplishing, in any meaningful way, what he said he has done. Just like someone claiming to have seen a UFO, there is no test, or court of law, to hold him accountable to the truth of what he says; we are simply to believe him. I really want to believe him, but I've read the OED for hours, and I know what it's like. So I don't.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Walk (Through the Dictionary) Not Spoiled!
Comment: Shea produces here a very entertaining and enlightening glance at both a dictionary that is so large that many homes don't have a shelf that can hold it all as well as a glimpse into the madness of someone crazy enough to want to read such a book. Sure, you'll learn a few new words and laugh at a lot of words that you didn't know existed, but at the same time you see the workings of a human being who's excited by an activity which many would consider the definition of "boring". The author injects the dictionary with personality and intrigue, and it makes for a very good, quick read. Absolutely worth your time.
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.
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