Sorry, Nicholson Baker, but I’ve had quite enough of this sort of thing:
Ammon Shea, a sometime furniture mover, gondolier and word collector, has written an oddly inspiring book about reading the whole of the Oxford English Dictionary in one go.
I thought A. J. Jacobs had thoroughly mined this gimmick with his tour through the Torah and his cycle through the encyclopedia. What’s next? Roget’s Thesaurus? Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance? I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
What happens after you’ve read the OED cover to cover? Where do you go from there? The eye transplant clinic? Could you ever bear to read again? Do I care? Bah.
Filed under: authors, books, reading | Tagged: Nicholson Baker, OED, Oxford English Dictionary, Ammon Shea, A. J. Jacobs, Year of Living Biblically, The Know-It-All, sheer exhaustion
My mom’s dad, in Italy, loved to read the English dictionary.
Though I know he didn’t try to read it all the way through. LOL
All of the phone books?
I dare ya to read the entire US code. I double dog dare ya.
I’d need a book contract first.
Just heard Ammon Shea on BBC radio describing the fact that
‘reading the dictionary was funer than I thought it would be’.
Maybe he should read grammar books cover to cover next, then he’d know how to form a comparative!
If he’s a ‘word nerd’ then so’s my illiterate left foot…