As the title suggests, the author read the staggering OED back to back over one
year because first, it was there, and second, he loved it.
He then chronicled this experience in 26 chapters, each consisting of a story
followed by a list of words starting with the same character that he gleaned
from the dictionary. Shea's obsession with words seeps throughout the 223
pages.
The second time I picked up the book was at the end of 2019. (We were buying a
new house and that's why I remembered.) I had treated it as a vocabulary book
and as such I checked back every couple of years to see if I had made any
progress. I didn't learn a single word.
After four years, I still recall the author, a New Yorker who collected and read
dictionaries, worked as a furniture mover, and had the insane luck of living with
an ex-lexicographer girlfriend. This time, I knew four words in the book before
I started reading: apricity, iatrogenic, misandry and petrichor.
I instantly picked up the word "rapin" as it defines me, an unruly art
student: on the jiu-jitsu mat, I often tap too late in spite of being told
so many times: "tap early, tap often."
To me, Ammon Shea was just as inspiring as Malcolm X. Both read a dictionary. I
imagined him a disciplinarian to boot, physically strong, and a wise man who saw
through human vanities and the material mess we lived in. But this book didn't
touch those subjects. Unlike Mr. X, Shea claimed that gathering words was only
hobby. He had no axe to grind and no practical purpose in reading the OED. It
was pure enjoyment statisfying the curiosity of his mind.
Toward the end, I did some calculation. 21730 pages a year is about 60 pages a
day. At the same pace, I could finish the American Heritage Dictionary in about
a month, come up with lists of words, and write the same kind of book!
