Reading the OED

If you are a word lover like I am, you don’t need my review to convince you to read Reading the OED by Ammon Shea. If you are not a word lover like I am, OED stands for Oxford English Dictionary and it’s MASSIVE! It is a source of great information about the origins of all words in the English language. In college, I had to write a paper after selecting 5 words to research within the OED. I can’t remember what words I chose but I can tell you they were wholly uninteresting. I'm sure I just wanted to get through the paper as quickly as possible. I don’t remember what grade I got on that paper but I certainly regret not spending more time engrossed in the OED when I had electronic access to it and all the time in the world.

Nevertheless, Reading the OED is about one man’s devotion to reading the OED in its entirety over the span of one year. Each chapter is a letter. He gives some insight into his quest and talks about his reading location, his declining vision, and other tribulations along the way before highlighting his favorite words within each letter. He has a comical style of writing but it helped that I really enjoyed reading all of the definitions he paraphrased as well. And I found a word that I am in love with, petrichor, which is the smell after it rains. Did you know that smell had a name? It does! Shea points out many things that you knew there was probably a word for but wouldn’t have ever found it if you hadn’t read the OED cover to cover. Reading the OED was a fast read, faster than reading the actual OED itself, and is worth your time, if you are a logophile such as I am.