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

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"A Perigee Book."
An obsessive word lover's account of reading the Oxford English Dictionary cover to cover.

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I'll stick with AJ Jacobs for my year-long challenge books and Simon Winchester for my OED exploration submitted by Sara W on June 21, 2011, 1:10am At the start of his book, Ammon Shea insists that he is reading the OED so that you don't have to. And then the entire conclusion of the book consists of him urging you to read the OED, or if not the OED, at least dictionaries, because they are just so fascinating.

I enjoy books about foolish endeavors, pointless goals, year-long challenges, but those books all seemed to offer a little more than Shea's. I had a hard time getting past the fact that he couldn't read properly without glasses, but that he didn't wear his glasses and so forth. It often seemed like he was trying to create reasons why this reading endeavor was a huge challenge, although he is a regular dictionary reader and was clearly just dying for an excuse to dig into the the grandaddy of all dictionaries.

It quickly devolved into a list of Shea's favorite words, which were well-chosen, often funny and charmingly unusual, but not really compelling reading matter. The book, which is is pretty short, also seemed to focus pretty exclusively on Shea's reading and favorites, so I didn't really connect with Shea as a narrator anyway.

So in conclusion, not my favorite. I'll stick to A.J. Jacobs for my year-long-zany-endeavor reading needs.