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    Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages
    Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages
    Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages
    Audiobook5 hours

    Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

    Written by Ammon Shea

    Narrated by William Dufris

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    ""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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateOct 14, 2008
    ISBN9780061735882
    Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages
    Author

    Ammon Shea

    Ammon Shea is the author of two previous books on obscure words, Depraved English and Insulting English (written with Peter Novobatzky). He read his first dictionary, Merriam Webster's Second International, ten years ago, and followed it up with the sequel, Webster's Third International.

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    Reviews for Reading the OED

    4.5/5

    29 ratings27 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Read this while in line to vote, got some strange looks.... but nobody else was smart enough to bring a book so they just had to stand there while I was reading about fantastic words!
    • 4/5
      A very silly book about a very silly idea - reading through the largest dictionary in the world, cover to cover. The author is obviously a man obsessed with dictionaries, words, and the English language in general. The OED is not the first dictionary he read and will not be the last. However, it is the most ambitious.Travel along with him as he embarks on this fantastic adventure and share in some of the most interesting words the OED has to offer. It is essentially a memoir crossed with The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. It is light, funny, and inspiring.
    • 4/5
      This is a quick and fun read for people who like language. Each chapter introduces esoteric words under a letter in the alphabet. The words are so esoteric, I cannot imagine ever using them in my writing. Hence the words and their meaning will soon be lost to me. It only took me two hours to read this book so there is not alot of bang for the entertainment buck.
    • 5/5
      There's a genre of books today where people do unsual things and then write humor essays about their experiences. This really isn't one of those. It is, instead, a book about unusual words and their meanings. How a writer chooses a short list of words from the hundreds of thousands in the OED is beyond me, but I am happy that Ammon Shea did so. I love his choices and his writing style.
    • 5/5
      Reading the OED: One Many, One Year, 21,730 Pages is Ammon Shea’s memoir of the year he spent reading the Oxford English Dictionary. But it is also a lot more than that. Reading the OED is a paean to words, a love song to language, and an ode to the world’s greatest dictionary. Shea reminds us from the outset that what he has done is no small feat. A thoroughly enjoyable, entertaining read filled with new information and witty repartee.Read my full review at The Book Lady's Blog.
    • 4/5
      I own the OED. It is a behemoth of scholarship. In twenty infinitely-packed volumes, one will find the entirety of the English language. Every word that has ever existed in English print. Ever. Ammon Shea makes it his mission to read the entire set over the course of a single year. He spends eight, ten, sometimes twelve hours every day in the basement of the Hunter College Library and explores the indescribable variety of the language. It's basically a collection of twenty-six (one for each letter) short essays, each followed by a list interesting words to showcase the strange and unusual. My favorite: Quomodocunquize—to make money is any way possible. A quick and fascinating read.
    • 4/5
      A short, wonderful romp through some key words found in the OED.
    • 4/5
      I've read a few of these type of books, and this is one of my favorites. It's arranged alphabetically with each chapter starting with some of Shea's thoughts on various dictionary related topics and is followed by some choice words from the OED with the author's commentary. While this book isn't for everyone, I enjoyed it and would recommend it to lovers of language.
    • 5/5
      The sub-title of -One Man,One Year,21,730 pages,tells you just where this most enjoyable book is going.Ammon Shea takes us in the slightly less number of pages,223 to be exact on a surprisingly funny journey from Abluvion to Zyxt. He explains an abundantia of weird on wonderful words.Even better than these however are the descriptions which begin each new letter,of his progress and problems on the way through his task. These range from how to house the 20 volumes in the first place,the health problems involved,such as headaches and backache,to the simple one of just finding a quiet place to read.When he is finished,or so he thinks,he is told that he should read the Bibliography too,and this he does,saying that this is the dullest part of all.When he and this book comes to an end he tells us that he thinks that he will read it again 'at leisure'. What a star !On the more serious side he gives high praise to this great dictionary and to the compilers of this fantastic work.What a great cover too.
    • 5/5
      I have not laughed this much or this loudly while reading a book in public in a very, very long time.

      But perhaps that says more about me than about this book; I think a book about obscure words and their definitions has a very specific audience.
    • 5/5
      (25 December 2012, a present from my friend Jen, who knows my reading taste and my wish list well)In this slim volume, Shea describes sitting in one of two chairs (one in his flat, one in the basement of his local library) reading the Oxford English Dictionary. The whole, multi-volume one with the very small print (he does end up with a prescription for glasses!) that comes in a series of boxes and has to supplant other dictionaries on his bookshelves. Because this isn’t one of those pranky, “apropos of nothing” quests: dictionaries were already his favourite reading matter – he even lives with a lexicographer and he’s startled to find himself considered an oddity at a lexicography convention – no one actually reads the things from cover to cover, do they?So, we end up with twenty-six chapters, which have either something about the experience of the reading project – finding a place outside the apartment to read, the physical effects, or what it’s like when you start to come to the end of a project like this – or something dictionary-related – the history of the form, errors, etc. We are then given a choice selection of words and definitions – mainly written by Shea himself – that are amusing, strange, horrible or a mixture of the three. I imagine that he carefully chose these so that everyone knows at least a few of them; or is that just me?A gentle and engaging read. We’re lost with the author when he gets to the end, and I love the descriptions of him littering the apartment with scraps of paper with hieroglyphical instructions to himself inscribed upon them. I was more pleased than perhaps I should have been when I discovered that, during one exercise bike section, I had read exactly half of this book …
    • 4/5
      If you love words, ploiter through this.
    • 5/5
      How is it that no one has reviewed this yet?* I'm only half way through and I can honestly say it is one of the funnier things I've read in some time. I also feel as though Ammon Shea is a long-lost brother. We seem to share an overall opinion of the, er, quality of the human race as a whole.This is a short but far from breezy read: in brief, Shea is an inveterate reader of dictionaries -- yes, reader, dictionaries -- and so, because it is there, he assays the great English dictionary of our time, the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary.There are 26 chapters, each of which starts with a reflection on the act of reading through this massive book. The reflection is followed by a selection of choice (and I mean choice) words beginning with one of the 26 letters of the alphabet.My coworker and I often laugh at how vehement folks get, where we work: they are fond of interrupting one another, with ejaculations such as "no no no no no!" It turns out there is a word for this: epizeuxis. Reading the OED is full of words that will answer your questions about whether "there is a word for ... this." Whatever this is.Along the way you get pieces of wisdom about lexicography, eyeglasses, and "the library people."First rate.* when I wrote this all I saw was "Reviews: None" at the top of the page. I see now that this is inaccurate.
    • 4/5
      This is a fun book for vocabularians, this book consists of twenty-six chapters, one for each letter. The first part of each chapter is the author introducing himself and observations about the process of reading the OED, followed by a series of words he found particularly interesting, with his own definition (based on one of the OED definitions), and a paragraph about what thoughts that word inspired in him. For instance, "unbepissed" means "not having been urinated on; unwet with urine." His comment was "Is it possible that at some time there was such a profusion of things that had been urinated on that there was a pressing need to distinguish those that had not?" Some of his finds resonate with me- tricoteuse (a woman who knits), ruffing (stamping the feet in applause - who hasn't sung "We Will Rock You" while clapping and ruffing along), obdormition (a limb that has fallen asleep), onomatomania (vexation at having difficulty finding the right word). Others are interesting for the story that must exist behind that word, for the word to exist at all - such as unbepissed, lant (to add urine to ale, to make it stronger), leep (to wash with cow dung and water), kakistocracy (government by the worst citizens), gymnologize (to dispute naked, like an Indian philosopher). I give it 4 stars out of 5 to vocabularians, and 3 stars to the general reader.
    • 5/5
      This compact little book is the perfect gift for an erudite reader. Original, witty, and wildly entertaining, it offers a highbrow alternative to its "book of lists" cousins that often occupy the family coffee table, kitchen table, or bathroom magazine rack. Mr. Shea, a self-avowed word junkie, spent one year reading the Oxford English Dictionary from cover to cover, and you'll love the treasures he's brought to light. Chapters "A," "B," and "C" alone are filled with enough amusing word trivia to keep you smiling for a week.Ammon's entries run from the delightfully useful (acnestis -- that pesky area of your back that can't be reached to be scratched), to the evocatively poetic (apricity -- the warmth of the sun in winter). You've got to love a book that introduces you to the term bed-swerver (an unfaithful spouse), even if some of the words hit a bit too close to home (anonymuncule -- an anonymous, small-time writer -- ouch). The next time I'm at a public function and my nerves are rubbed raw by someone's incessant laughter, I'll just smile to myself and think, "this guy is a world-class cachinnator (a person who laughs too much or too loudly) -- he's due for a curtain lecture (a reproof given by a wife to her husband in bed) when he gets home."Seriously, this book is addictive. I'm already poking around in the D's, and contrary to deteriorism -- the attitude that things will usually get worse -- I'm certain that Shea's book will just get better and better. Buy it. Samuel Johnson will be proud of you.
    • 5/5
      A book - and a writer - after my own heart. I would have enjoyed this all-too-short book had it been six times its size. Every bookworm proclivity of mine was satisfied with this masterpiece of knowledge, etymology, humor and flat-out supernerdiness. Most fascinating were the English-word rare finds that are perfect stand-ins for well known words in other languages that fully explain specific phenomena. Almost shocking is that he ponders in the afterword what his next project will be, and tinkers with the idea of reading the phone book, which he eventually did. I want to write the next book in the progression. I'm obsessing over it.
    • 4/5
      As readers, most of us have a foiblesse* for words. In this jocoserious* look at language, the chrestomathic* author has an engouement* for dictionaries and offers his readers the opportunity to join him as a fellow vocabularian*. Learning new words could help cure psittacism* or, the problem I sometimes suffer from when writing reviews, onomatomania*.I urge you to not be a dulcarnon*. Just pick up this book and read it. With only 26 letters to explore, there are no worries about indesinence* to prolong the experience. In fact, I wish the book had been longer. It was educational, witty, and might give the advantage of benedicence* in everyday life.*Shea?s definitions for underlined words:foiblesse - distinctive weaknessjocoserious - half serious and half in jestchrestomathic - devoted to the learning of useful mattersengouement - irrational fondnessvocabularian - one who pays attention to wordspsittacism - the meaningless repetition of words or phrasesonomatomania - vexation at having difficulty in finding the right worddulcarnon - a person in a dilemmaindesinence - want of a proper endingbenedicence - benevolence in speech; kind conversation.
    • 3/5
      I found this diverting and funny and could well enter into his enthusiasm for the OED which is indeed great reading.
    • 3/5
      The author set out to read the entire Oxford English Dictionary in one year. The OED, Shea explains, is not just a dictionary; with its etymologies and usage examples from great literature, it also recapitulates the entire history of the modern English language. And it is fairly thorough: in its 21,730 pages it features fifty-none million words, “give or take a few thousand.” The letter S takes up four volumes alone – more than 3,000 pages. The most recent print edition fills twenty volumes and weighs 137.72 pounds.Shea loves his dictionaries. He arrays them along his wall, “all dust-jacketed in dark blue, with a regal and chitinous gloss, resembling the covering of some beautiful and wordy beetle.” When reading them, he claims to find “the entire range of emotions and reactions that a great book will call forth from its reader … they just happen to be alphabetized.”The chapters are organized alphabetically, with a brief survey of word selections from that letter in the OED preceded by some background notes and an accounting of how the author is surviving the reading process. He supplements his selection of favorite words and their definitions with his own elucidations, such as these entries:Accismus (n.) An insincere refusal of a thing that is desired. As in: “No, please, I really would like for you to have the last donut.”Mythhistory (n.) A mythologized account of history.In other words, history.What is the longest entry in the print version of the OED? It turns out to be the word set, which has 155 main senses as a verb, nine as an adjective, 48 as a noun, and one as a conjunction. In the online version, make is the largest entry (because of the greater ease of electronic updating). Shea also makes the interesting observation that the letter W is qualitatively different than other letters: since there is no such letter in ancient Latin, the vocabulary of W is overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon. He notes that reading W is like reading another dictionary!I had high hopes for a book that begins with “Exordium (Introduction),” but ultimately I was disappointed. The author’s wit at the beginning of the book gives way to a litany of complaints including headaches, blurry vision, endless cups of coffee, and jeremiads against people who talk when he is trying to read. An inordinate number of his word commentaries have to do with how obnoxious other people’s children are. I would give the book 3 stars out of 5. If nothing else, it may help cure you of onomatomania (vexation at having difficulty in finding the right word).
    • 4/5
      The Book Report: Ammon Shea, whom I suspect of autodidacticism, was a New York City furniture mover and dicitionary freak living with his recovering lexicographer girlfriend when he conceives of a way to get paid for sitting in a corner and reading: He will, in one year, read the entire 20-volume print version of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and report on the experience of doing so, what lexicological gems he found while doing so, and what the experience does to his sneaking-up-on-forty body. (Nothing good, as one can imagine.) I strongly suspect he thought this wheeze up so someone would buy him the whole thousand-dollar kit and kaboodle. I have no evidence to support this conjecture, just a little quiver in my antennae. What the heck, he'll never see this review, so where's the harm?My Review: I confess: I am such a nerd that, at age 11, I set out to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica (1947 edition) that my mother prized above all her other books. Originally, I approached the task sternly alphabetically. I understood very little of what I was reading, so I abandoned this approach and instead began jumping around to cross-references as entries confused, excited, angered me; I learned a lot more that way, and before six months were out, I got my first major dictionary (Random House Dictionary of the English Language 1966) so I would stop pestering my mother to tell me what words she'd never heard before meant.My mother, my sisters, and my First Great Love all made gentle fun of me at first, but mostly left me to get on with it because it was *such* a relief that I no longer wanted to talk only about cars. The charm of this, inevitably, waned as I discoursed upon late Imperial/early Republican China's woes; motifs in Greek painting; the apple and its manifold wonders (though my mother, the foodie, was more willing to listen to this than most of the other stuff) (oh, and that last is still a source of abiding fascination to me), etc etc. Soon I faced open hostility as I approached, big brown volume in hand, gleam of joy in newfound knowledge lighting my face; I learned quickly how very little fondness most people have for someone smarter than they are, better informed than they are, and unafraid to show it.So imagine my rapturous surprise when my eye lit on this book in the bargain bin! (Sorry, Mr. Shea, but if it's any consolation, it's from the third printing. I owe you a cup of coffee.) There exists in the world a bigger nerd than I am! W00t!I read the book with a delight that's rare, the eager and guilt-laden urgency to see how far *this* big ol' nerd will go out of his cave. It was an impressive distance. He's a very, very curmudgeonly person, at least as he portrays himself; and he's unafraid of social opprobrium, which is laudable in a smartypants.But in the end, much as I liked reading his alphabetical listings of the weird and wonderful discoveries, I was left wanting something more than the brief introductory essays in each letter provided: I wanted some synthesis, which he implies he did; he mentions several times compiling lists of synonyms and antonyms and words that define the same concept in slightly different ways, which lists and definitions I really wish had been in the book.I suspect this is the work of his editor, who then is proof of my contention that no editor is always right, and occasionally should be fought. Oh well. Maybe next book.Still and all, minor quibbles aside, this is a wonderful read and should be read ASAP by word freaks everywhere; and also by those socially inept folk in need of reassurance that, somewhere in New York City, there is a man who can give them a solid run for their awkward money. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      You'd never guess it from its subject, but this book is just laugh-out-loud funny. The author makes gentle fun of his obsessions with words, books, and libraries, and, at least for someone who shares his obsessions, it's terrific. I especially liked Shea's chapter on the letter O (stay with me, here), which begins, "I have recently developed a morbid fear that I am turning into one of 'the Library People.' " In the end, Shea's girlfriend assures him that not only has he become a Library Person, but the librarians probably already have a nickname for him.
    • 5/5
      Ammon Shea has already read other dictionaries. This time, he decides he will read the mother of all dictionaries, the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary (specifically, the 1989 print edition). This book chronicles his adventures reading, from A to Z. Each chapter, named after the letters of the alphabet, begins with his experiences reading the OED and ends with his favorite words from that letter, a definition, and his reflection of the word. The humorous narration and commentary on words and language made me laugh out loud while I was reading. I enjoyed this book thoroughly, and recommend it to anyone who loves words or dictionaries.
    • 5/5
      I love this book! It's one of the most enjoyable reads I have ever had and have read it several times. His ability to make words so entertainingly funny is wonderfully intellligent and unpretentious. I've been reading dictionaries for enjoyment for twenty or so years and he inspired me to finally break down and buy the 20 volume OED, it's the best book in the world for logophiles who love to get lost in the fascinating words of the English language." Reading the OED " is bitingly funny, smart, and edifying. Highly recommended for word lovers.
    • 2/5
      I didn't enjoy this book as much as I thought I would, to be honest. I was super-excited to read it, but I couldn't click with the writing style - the author was a bit too misanthropic for my (admittedly, delicate) tastes, and I couldn't quite mesh with his prose.
    • 4/5
      A recent trend in books and movies is the time-limited experiment. The most famous of these is likely the provocative documentary "Super-Size Me," which details the effects of eating only at McDonald's for a month. Authors have tried this too, most successfully A.J. Jacobs, who tried to live strictly according to the Bible ("The Year of Living Biblically") after previously reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica in a year ("The Know-It-All").None of these experiments, however, is as audacious, or seemingly absurd, as Ammon Shea's attempt to read the entire Oxford English Dictionary in one year. The masterwork detailing usage in the English language is 20 volumes long; unlike even an encyclopedia, it is not meant to be read cover to cover. Reading word after word, listing etymology, different usages, and referenced quotations demonstrating each shade of meaning, sounds to be a sisyphean task worse than boring."Reading the OED" does not change this assessment. Despite my affection for the OED (one day, I dream of having those 20 volumes on my shelves for personal reference), Shea's book does not make me want to read the OED, or any dictionary, cover to cover. However, it does detail Shea's rather quixotic need to do so in an almost charming, if incredibly geeky, way.Between an introduction and conclusion, Shea has 26 chapters, one for each letter, which feature an opening essay followed by a selection of quirky words from the OED, playfully defined and commented upon by Shea. The words are playful and entertaining, and the narrative essays range from Shea discovering his love of reading dictionaries to the workmanlike discipline required to read the OED in one year. Interspersed in all of these essays are Shea's peculiarly insightful comments on lexicography, from the selection process (what words get left out) to appreciating the definition of common, flexible, short words to his wonder at the lurking snarky editorial comments. The most entertaining is certainly Shea's trip to a dictionary conference, where he is both in his element, and yet clearly an outsider (some of their reactions about his attempt to read the OED are priceless).Overall, this is an entertaining travelogue of a trip no one else wants to take. Shea's enthusiasm is not exactly contagious, but makes the book a pleasant read, not just for logophiles but for most who appreciate the slightly odd topic explored in an open, friendly way.
    • 4/5
      Unlike Ammon Shea's project to read the entire OED, reading his book about reading the OED is a quick and pretty simple task.His prose is light and more amiable than you'd expect if you took his descriptions of himself (as a fairly asocial loner) at face value. The text style reminded me a little of Bill Bryson or David Sedaris.At the end of each chapter he provides a few sample headwords from the OED, with his own paraphrasing of one definition for each, followed by a little (often snarky) commentary in which he perhaps sees himself in the role of Ambrose Bierce. His selection of words include those amusing for their bizarrely tiny area of applicability, those that should be better known because of the commonness of the situation they describe, and those that merely seemed interesting to him at the time. Purely based on the statistics of the dictionary, the vast majority of these are obscure words, but each of us will know a few of them.
    • 5/5
      One man's mad and delightful quest to read all of the Oxford English dictionary -- not the 2 volume set with the magnifying glass in the little drawer but the unabridged 20 volume edition. Along the way he attends a conference for people who write dictionaries, he talks about reading in an urban environment, he visits a collector of dictionaries, and he writes down a splendid assortment of wonderful words that you would find in the OED if you only had the time to read it. (It takes him a year of day-after-day day-long dedicated reading.) Each chapter is a short essay that makes pleasant reading and a short, well-chosen list of words. (Mostly words for things you never thought there was a word for.) A wonderful book for anyone who speaks or reads English.(For anyone who dreads that this is just a snobbish vocabulary-building book in disguise, it isn't: it is pleasant, painless, and there wasn't a standard-issue SAT vocabulary word in any of the lists.)