Authors: Ammon Shea
ISBN-13: 9780399535055, ISBN-10: 0399535055
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Date Published: May 2009
Edition: Reprint
Ammon Shea read his first dictionary, Merriam Webster's Second International, ten years ago, and followed it up with the sequel, Webster's Third International. He has been reading dictionaries, lexicons, and glossaries ever since. He lives surrounded by large, old books.
An obsessive word lover's account of reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary, hailed as "the Super Size Me of lexicography."
"I'm reading the OED so you don't have to," says Ammon Shea on his slightly masochistic journey to scale the word lover's Mount Everest: the Oxford English Dictionary. 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.
an oddly inspiring book about reading the whole of the Oxford English Dictionary in one go…Shea's book offers more than exotic word lists, though. It also has a plot. "I feel as though I am eating the alphabet," he writes halfway through, and you want him to make it to the end. This is the "Super Size Me" of lexicography.