Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries

Written by Kory Stamper

Narrated by Kory Stamper

Do you have strong feelings about the word “irregardless”? Have you ever tried to define the word “is”? Brimming with intelligence and personality, this vastly entertaining account of how dictionaries are made is a must-read for word mavens.

Many of us take dictionaries for granted, and few may realize that the process of writing dictionaries is, in fact, as lively and dynamic as language itself. With sharp wit and irreverence, Kory Stamper cracks open the complex, obsessive world of lexicography, from the agonizing decisions about what to define and how to do it, to the knotty questions of usage in an ever-changing language. She explains why small words are the most difficult to define, how it can take nine months to define a single word, and how our biases about language and pronunciation can have tremendous social influence. And along the way, she reveals little-known surprises—for example, the fact that “OMG” was first used in a letter to Winston Churchill in 1917.

Word by Word brings to life the hallowed halls (and highly idiosyncratic cubicles) of Merriam-Webster, a startlingly rich world inhabited by quirky and erudite individuals who quietly shape the way we communicate. Certain to be a delight for all lovers of words, Stamper’s debut will make you laugh as much as it makes you appreciate the wonderful complexities and eccentricities of the English language.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524776152

Reviews for Word by Word

[katiekrug · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A fun and fascinating look at how disctionaries are created and updated, told with knowledge and humor. I liked how the book was organized around chapters devoted to specific words and lexicograhers' tasks.

This was my June pick for my Julia Memorial Read (reading a book each month that she rated highly), and I can see why she loved it. Stamper and Julia share(d) a love of words and language. And humor.

4 stars

[kwagnerroberts · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Okay, I just finished wrestling with words writing my dissertation so perhaps I was ready for this type of book. That said, I found Kory Stamper's job fascinating in a way that appeals to the hermit in me! She has just the right amount of humor within the very serious context of words and meanings.

[daumari · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful look into the world of lexicography, or crafting and compiling the words and definitions that comprise a dictionary (and other relevant features such as first usage origin, pronunciations, etc.) Stamper describes her job as constant reading, searching for possible new senses or examples of existing ones as citations, and that sounds like a dream job (teasing out the finer points of the verb forms of take: less so).

I've been prescriptivist in the past, but I'm coming round to the descriptive position- that dictionaries, etc. are here to log usage of a living language, not necessarily what the "right" version is (which is why irregardless, ain't, and other words have a place in the dictionary- because people use them).

[kalliegrace · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Delightful. For anyone who's attempted to read a dictionary (why? mind your business), or just has a fascination with language, this will be a hit. How are words chosen for a dictionary? How are definitions developed? Who decides what the definitions of words are? Does changing a definition in the dictionary change the word's meaning in real life (no, duh)? This is funny, self-deprecating, and always illuminating. If you don't follow Merriam-Webster on Instagram, you should.

[markm2315 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Quite pleasant. I would say non-cromulent, but I confused myself, and now I don't know.

[kslade-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great book on being a lexicographer, working on dictionaries, and the strange English language. It made me laugh several times.

[tuckerresearch · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a first person account of how dictionaries are made and some of the history behind it. It is one-part erudite and one-part chatty. But, if you like words, etymology, grammar, dictionaries, and the history of the book, you will enjoy it. She does get a little progressivy, like discussing "nude" and "marriage" as definitions. Stamper and her ilk would like to just describe what they do a descriptivism (instead of prescriptivism), but, when a dictionary decides to come down one side of a debate on the usage of a words over another, they ARE making a prescriptive and biased choice. Re: the recent kerfuffle over the definition of "woman." Stamper, like many scholars today, see part of their role in society as a mandate to change society to fit their, often progressive/postmodern, molds.

[psalva-706031 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was top notch. I loved every minute I spent reading it. Laugh-out-loud funny, smart, and playfully informative, it is a new favorite of mine.

[pishmoffle · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An interesting look into the work that goes into the making of a dictionary. Can definitely recommend if you're the lexicographically curious type.

[john.cooper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Kory Stamper has what for much of my life I would have considered my dream job: she is a lexicographer for Merriam-Webster. She is also our generation’s only star lexicographer, having hosted one of the most popular Twitter feeds about words and made many media appearances. Contrary to many people’s expectations for lexicographers, she is unfussy, emotionally recognizable, and often very funny. I was excited to read her book. It often delighted me (that humor) but just as often it annoyed me to distraction.

Why? Because she accepts the as gospel truth the attitude that descriptivism and prescriptivism must always be opposed, that there is no continuum between the poles that they represent, and that the battle is essentially moral in character. With the zeal of a convert—for like most people who grew up loving language, she admits having once tried hard to treasure “correct” usage and deplore “incorrect” usage—she paints descriptive lexicographers as the victims of a religious war waged by puritan prescriptivists. And just as New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins paint people of faith as naive believers in a bearded man in the sky, Stamper paints all she considers prescriptivists as ignorant, moralistic dupes.

To be sure, there are a lot of prescriptivist idiots out there, and they do tend to make the lives of linguists and lexicographers miserable by clinging to grammatical rules without basis and, in many cases, the conviction that the presence of a word in a dictionary is a political decision on the part of its publishers. (You only need to read Stamper’s chapter about the email campaign that followed M-W’s definition of “marriage” to include same-sex relationships, such as in the common phrase gay marriage.)

But as a professional copyeditor for much of my life, and one who has learned and continues to learn much from linguists and other authorities, I’m deeply tired of ad hominem attacks from Pullum, McWhorter, and now Stamper, condescendingly explaining why every example of linguistic guidance must be at the very least a mistake and more likely an example of hypocritical moralism. It never seems to occur to them that many of us who have given advice on English usage are acting not out of ignorance or moralism, but with the goal of helping others use language to communicate more effectively. Oddly enough, linguists and lexicographers such as Pullum, McWhorter, and Stamper are all excellent writers, even as they demonize those who would teach techniques for effective writing—such as by avoiding syntax that might be perceived as errors by the audience being addressed.

Time and again, Stamper misreads those she chooses to consider opposed to her position. For example, she quotes E. B. White’s The Elements of Style in decrying the use of “certainly” as a “mannerism,” “used indiscriminately…much as others use very, to intensify any and every statement.” Then she picks, as an example of his supposed hypocrisy, a sentence from one of White’s other works: “You certainly don’t have to be a humorist to taste the sadness of situation and mood.” But one use does not a mannerism make, and there’s no evidence that White is using “certainly” as a meaningless and generic intensifier here. She does something similar with Samuel Johnson, ignoring half of a sentence he writes about English pronunciation to more easily refute his position by interpreting it in a ridiculous way.

All that said, there is a lot to love about this book. I love her footnotes, which she often uses as footnotes should always be used, to make an interesting, humorous, or otherwise entertaining aside that wouldn’t fit as well into the main text. (On the other hand, she sometimes uses footnotes to lecture the reader about facts she arrogantly assumes only she would know.) I admire her irreverence, and I like her ability to laugh at herself, even as I suspect that it’s somewhat pridefully cultivated. And it’s fun reading about the wonderful misfits who make up the staff of a great dictionary—why aren’t my coworkers ever this eccentric and provocative?

I’m giving this book four stars because Stamper is a genius, although an often annoying one, and because there’s no other like it. And also because I know most readers won’t have the chips on their shoulders that I carry from being cast as the heretic standing outside the Church of Descriptivist Righteousness. Word lovers, pick it up, enjoy! But don’t let the author shame you because of your opinion that some usages, in some situations, may be better chosen than other usages in the same situation. Whether you consider yourself a prescriptivist or a descriptivist, temper your ardor with humility, and stride bravely forth.

[spinsterrevival · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this; there was so much amazing stuff I learned here. It’s a cool bit of history on dictionaries, but really it’s how a lexicographer works in defining words. Stamper makes it sound fascinating and really loves it, and it’s sad that it sounds like it may be a dying breed of work.

[kevn57-163679 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not as exciting as Winchester's "The Professor and the Madman", but a lot more relevant to modern day dictionaries. I'm a sucker for just about any book about books and words are the building blocks of books. Well worth a read.

[library_lin · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Kory Stamper knows words. And she should because, as she explains, being a lexicographer is no mindless jaunt down the proverbial primrose path. I'm not sure if I enjoyed this book more for the behind-the-scenes look at writing a dictionary or for her writing style. I found myself quoting sections of the book while laughing hysterically. If people were present, they sometimes looked away politely.

Using individual words, she lets us peek into the combination of thought and angst that goes into defining terms, providing usage examples, etymologies, and pronunciation. She shares what it's like to be in the trenches of the grammar wars. Merriam-Webster is on the descriptivist side of the debate. If you want a prescriptivist version, go to American Heritage.

Who would have thought that the dictionary could be so rife with fascinating conundrums? Those brave lexicographers work so hard to help the rest of us understand all the nuances of what we so thoughtlessly toss into the world. Who could have guessed that lexicographers sometimes get death threats because of decisions they make to make the language reflect how it's actually used?

If you care about the English language at all, this book is a must-read!

[wren73-89184 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed most of the book; I might have enjoyed being a lexicographer; although I do like to talk to people I know, I like working in quiet. The history of dictionaries was interesting, too.

[juliestielstra · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am definitely a word nerd, so of course I enjoyed this. Stamper is one of those mysterious creatures who actually research and write the words in a dictionary (Merriam-Webster). What goes in? What is refused admission? Why? How are definitions written and under what rules? How do they even FIND the words and meanings to be considered? All grist for my curious mill. Stamper can be funny (though she sometimes tries too hard), is very frequently profane (an occupational hazard, perhaps? A word is a word is a word...), but is also smart and devoted to the cause. I particularly enjoyed her revelations about the culture of the dictionary biz: the passionate feelings about words, the cult of introversion in the office (editors do not have phones on their desks; talking is rather frowned upon... sounds like MY idea of heaven!), and the always-whirring brains of the word people as they move about the world (doing things like taking cell phone photographs of an array of cosmetics as documentation of the various meanings of the word "nude"). A pleasant few hours' read.

[stevesbookstuff · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The words "fun" and "fascinating" appear in a lot of the reviews of this book, and I have to agree. It's an "inside look" at how the Merriam-Webster dictionary is put together that's both humorous and informative, and it draws you right in.

[tduvally-355175 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

She effortlessly made dictionaries cool.

[kimmeyer-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is fascinating for a word nerd! The audio was fun because she clearly gets how dry and yet interesting the subject is.

[dmturner · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful, funny, absorbing book about what it is like to be a lexicographer and work on a dictionary, that epicenter of cultural wars. Apparently, a dictionary's office is more like the eye of the hurricane in its quietness and avoidance of social interaction. That doesn't stop the author from being accurate, opinionated, and amusing in writing. She writes about how she got the job in the first place, what is involved in writing definitions, and how society's attitude toward the English language has evolved (or not) since the first dictionaries in English.
Perhaps my favorite quote:
Removing a word from the dictionary doesn't do away with the thing that word refers to specifically, or even tangentially. Removing racial slurs from the dictionary will not eliminate racism; removing "injustice" from the dictionary will not bring about justice. If it were really as easy as that, don't you think we would have removed words like "murder" and "genocide" from the dictionary already? Jerkery, like stupidity and death, is an ontological constant in our universe. (242)
I follow the author on Twitter (@KoryStamper) and also the funny, apt editorial articles linked through the Merriam-Webster Twitter account (@MerriamWebster) so I put this book on my to-read list when it came out in 2017, but only got around to it now.

[zcorbain · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

After hearing Kory on a podcast (Penn Jillette's I think), I bought this book. It was a fun read, part autobiographical, part descriptive, part historical, it gave me a better understanding and appreciation for the work that goes into maintaining a dictionary. I was exposed to several fun words that I had never seen before, but that's not the focus of the book. A lot of what we think we know about the dictionary is a matter of illusion. It doesn't tell us what words mean, but how we actually use them and how the grow and morph over time. Each chapter has a central word as a theme, but explains a lot around that word (meta-data, tangential topics, and such) in an entertaining and enlightening fashion. She does drop a few swear words in, for those that dislike that sort of thing, but they're few and far between.

[lyndainoregon · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If you love words ... if you're at all curious about how dictionaries are put together ... if you have a weakness for word trivia (such as learning that the literal meaning of "pumpernickel" is "goblin fart") -- this is the book for you.

Kory Stamper is a lexicographer. She reads things for a living. More than that ... she defines, updates, and researches the history of words for the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. And she writes about these endeavors with an irresistible joy and humor. It's a glimpse into a profession most of us are essentially unaware of: You mean, somebody WRITES dictionaries? They don't just fall from Word Heaven fully formed?

Nope. They don't. And the story of how they came into being, how they reflect the culture from which they grew, and what it takes to keep them current and accurate, is a fascinating one for any logophile -- particularly when presented in Stamper's delightful style.

Come along then, and learn why "it's in the dictionary" doesn't mean "it's acceptable usage". Understand why words like "ain't" and "irregardless" continue in dictionaries today as "stubborn barnacles of nonstandard English that can't be completely scraped off the hull of the language", and discover how the definition of "nude" led to a BuzzFeed video and general outrage on the internet.

[boundtogetherforgood · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is all about how dictionaries are created. I enjoyed it.

[fiddleback_ · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If you use a dictionary, or think you might use a dictionary some day, this is an excellent book for telling you how and why they get made and why contrafibulations hasn't made it in yet.

[m.belljackson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Word by Word started off lively and funny, then got pretty repetitive.
It would have profited by being at least one third shorter.

Anecdotes about how the author and others became lexicographic definers were great!

I was also hoping for more coverage of the substantial contributions of James Murray and the original OED.

[mickyfine · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An insider's view into the realities of being a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster's dictionary and what a fascinating world it is. From getting the skinny on how you become a lexicographer to what that work actually looks like to the research that goes into features like pronunciations and dates, is made into enthralling and funny reading. Stamper doesn't glamorize the life of a lexicographer however. There are plenty of tales of the weeks taken to revise a single definition but the result is a book that will delight word nerds of every stripe. Went back to my library with a staff picks sticker on it.

[rosalita_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Every last syllable of this book is utterly delightful. You should seek it out and read it immediately. The End.

OK, that's not much of a review. Let's try again.

Kory Stamper is a lexicographer for Merriam-Webster, which means, essentially, that she and her colleagues write the dictionary. She's long been one of my favorite word-nerd Twitter follows, because she is smart and profanely witty and even more in love with language than I am. More than once, as she has shared some wry observation about the lexicographical life, I've thought, "Man, that would be my dream job." And now, she's written a book for all of us who have ever thought, "How on earth do you write a dictionary, exactly?"

Stamper has cleverly constructed the book as a series of chapters, each focused on one particular dictionary word. But she uses a word's story to tell her own, in the process highlighting all the aspects of lexicography that go far beyond writing definitions. The word "but" is the jumping-off point to discuss how grammar figures into dictionary writing, and the tremendous difficulty sometimes of pinning down just what part of speech a particular usage of a particular word actually is — and how none of that is what most people mean when they talk about grammar: To them, "grammar" is a loose conglomeration of stylistic word choices that get codified into right and wrong, misspellings that every English speaker has made at some point in their life and yet are branded as "bad grammar," half-remembered "rules" about usage shamed into them by their middle-school English teachers, and personal, sometimes irrational dislikes. This is the grammar that shows up on Internet memes about "your" and "you're," the sort of grammar people are referring to when they claim you can't end a sentence with a preposition, the grammar that is invoked when people claim that the "10 items or less" sign at the grocery store is "bad grammar."

That excerpt probably gives you a clue that Stamper — indeed all lexicographers and the dictionaries they create — are descriptionist rather than prescriptionist. Despite years of claims to the contrary (including the marketing materials of those self-same dictionaries!) the purpose of a dictionary is to describe and define language as it is being used by ordinary people right now, not to settle bets or teach anyone the One True Way. A similar message is conveyed in the chapter about "it's," wherein I learned that in fact the possessive and plural forms of that word were pretty much interchangeable for hundreds of years, including in the King James Bible and much of Shakespeare.

Other chapters use a specific word as the basis for illuminating the myriad different tasks that a lexicographer performs every day: searching written materials to find new citations for new words as well as new ways of using old words; the tricky considerations that go into defining the word "surfboard," which seems deceptively obvious until you try to pin it down; how small, ordinary words like "take" and "set" are the hardest to pin down because they have so many senses and subtleties of meaning (Stamper refers to them as "semantically oozy").

A chapter on revising the entry for "bitch" expands into a discussion of how dictionaries treat words that are considered vulgar or derogatory, and the problems that arise when not everyone agrees that certain words or sub-senses of words deserve to be labeled as such (including the problem that the majority of the people making those calls are still older white men of relative privilege who have not experienced having those words hurled at them in very personal ways).

There are chapters on the challenges of nailing down a word's etymology, and how a good anecdote ("posh" is shorthand for "port out, starboard home") is no substitute for actual documentation; the never-ending search to find the earliest known written use of each word; and the tricky business of conveying pronunciation that can accommodate dialect differences (this is why dictionaries use phonemic alphabets so that i is pronounced like the vowel in pin,whatever that may sound like in your dialect). Again Stamper makes the point that the dictionary's focus is on describing usage, not judging right and wrong.

The final chapter details how all hell broke loose in 2009, when some evangelicals noticed that the dictionary had added a sub-sense to the word "marriage" that described relationships between people of the same sex. (That the definition had changed six years earlier with no fanfare did not stem the outrage.) It's a thoughtful intro to discussion of how people often get very angry about specific dictionary entries because they feel the dictionary is instigating societal changes that make them uncomfortable instead of simply describing how society has already changed.

I no longer have any illusions that being a lexicographer is like getting to have ice cream for breakfast every day. It's a difficult, demanding, and rewarding endeavor that requires skills that go beyond just "loving words". Loving words is definitely a prerequisite, though, and this book will give you an even greater appreciation of the nutty ways that English has developed and evolved over the centuries. If I had my life to live over, I could think of much worse ways to spend it than writing a dictionary.

[askelmore · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Best for: People who love words. So, you know, ALL OF US.

In a nutshell: Mirriam-Webster Dictionary lexicographer Kory Stamper shares a behind the scenes look at what goes into that tome so many of us take for granted, the dictionary.

Worth quoting:
“The fact is that many the things that are presented to us as rules are really just the of-the-moment preferences of people who have had the opportunity to get their opinions published and whose opinions end up being reinforced and repeated down the ages as Truth.”

Why I chose it:
I love words!

Review:
I’ve been in a bit of a reading black hole the past month. After powering through all three of the Crazy Rich Asians books in like a week, I posted just one (ONE!) review in May. I have maybe three or four books that I’m a chapter or two into, but I just couldn’t get into any. So I picked this one up because it seemed fun, and thank Maude, I’m cured. This was a delight to read, and has kick-started my consumption of the written word.

Being a dictionary editor sounds partially amazing and partially horrible. No one talks except outside the office on lunch breaks (which, most days, is my dream, but still, I like to at least have the option), and there’s a lot of time spent reading. Unfortunately, the reading isn’t for pleasure so much as it is to look for interesting examples of words being used, to refer back to at a later time when revising the dictionary.

I’ve never put a whole lot of thought into dictionaries; I don’t own a physical one anymore, but I think I might pick one up after reading this. Ms. Stamper has a great grasp of language (as you’d hope), and manages to make what could be extraordinarily dry subject matter come alive with interesting stories, clever anecdotes, and vivid imagery. Its a great little book that I think my fellow Cannonballers would enjoy.

[hardlyhardy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ever wonder where dictionaries come from? Probably not. Dictionaries are just something we ignore until we need to know how a word is spelled or exactly what it means. And for most people, that isn't often.

It turns out that making a dictionary is a long, intense, complicated process that few people can do. Those who can think it's the best job in the world, however poor the pay and long the hours. So writes Merriam-Webster lexicographer Kory Stamper in her marvelous book “Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries.”

Stamper calls her book "a nitty-gritty, down-and-dirty, worm's eye's-eve-view of lexicography," and that seems fitting. In her relatively short book, she covers in sparkling prose how they define words, how they decide on pronunciation, how they find examples of usage, how they date words, how they handle offensive and non-standard words and even how they respond to those who question their decisions.

Readers will find many surprises along the way. Here are some things that I found interesting:

* Merriam-Webster makes it a point to respond to every letter or email about its dictionaries.

* The hardest dictionary entries are those hardly anyone ever looks up in a dictionary. These are simple words like a, an, and and the. Stamper says she devoted a month to the word take, while a colleague spent nine months on run.

* Average production is one word per day per staff member, or about 250 words a year. That's why it takes years to produce a new dictionary.

* They never start a new dictionary at the letter A. One reason is that those who review dictionaries, and I have reviewed two or three in my career, usually start at the beginning and rarely read the whole thing. Since lexicographers, like everybody else, get better with practice, they save A for later.

* The lexicographers at Merriam-Webster rarely speak to each other during working hours. They communicate in writing. This informal code of silence helps with concentration. Most of them may be introverts anyway, so it's usually not a problem. One exception is the man responsible for determining how words are pronounced. He may go around the building asking staffers to say certain words.

* Stamper seems partial to words of the four-letter variety. With thousands of words at her command, one might expect more refined choices.

[gwendydd · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is so much fun!

Stamper has a delightful sense of humor, and naturally the book is full of fun wordplay. Stamper provides lots of insight into how dictionaries are made and the role they play in our language. She makes a strong case for descriptivism (as opposed to prescriptivism) and makes surprising cases for the existence of words like "irregardless." She also paints a detailed picture of the life of a lexicographer, which made me both very jealous and very glad that I dodged that bullet.

A highly entertaining and informative read!

[thelibraryladies · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Kate: So it will surprise no one here that I love to read. What may surprise people is that even though I love reading and the words that ultimately come with it, I don’t have much interest in the history or said words. When this was picked for book club, I will totally own up to the fact that I basically groaned internally. I have a hard enough time with non fiction as it is (unless it’s narrative, memoir, or true crime), so I worried that this would be a terribly boring slog to get through. The good news is that I wasn’t totally correct in this. The bad news is, like the scorpion in that old folktale, it’s in my nature to have a hard time with this kind of book no matter how engaging it is.

But I’m going to focus mostly on the good since the bad isn’t any fault of Stamper’s. “Word By Word” was a well done, and at times quite funny, overview of what it’s like to work at Merriam-Webster, and the intricacies that go into adding words to and defining words for a dictionary. I guess that until I read this book it never occurred to me that there would be questions and consistently changing definitions to words, or that sometimes it can take months to settle on a most representative definition. Stamper not only talks about what it’s like to work at Merriam-Webster in this capacity, she also talks about how people like her have to take so many different variables into account just to function in the best way possible. For some, some of the most interesting concepts were focused on how society perceives dictionaries, and how they actually are supposed to function. Within this was the authority myth, in that if a word is defined one way in the dictionary, this is the bottom line because the dictionary said so. Stamper points out that this just isn’t the case; dictionaries are not supposed to be authorities on definitions, they are merely there to record and relay these definitions. Language is always changing, and therefore the meanings of words are changing too.

My reservations and hesitations about this book (aka why it was a slog) was going back to my nature: I am very picky about my non fiction. I merely want to reiterate that for my ultimate rating, because it was based on form, not substance. This book also gave our book club a LOT to talk about, which was really, really excellent. So while “Word By Word” wasn’t really my cup of tea, I can see it being very appealing to a lot of people who aren’t me.

Serena: As evidenced by the content of this blog, neither Kate or I are big nonfiction readers. If anything, Kate is more of a nonfiction reader than I am, and as seen in her thoughts above, she’s still not that into it. At least she has true crime to back her up as not completely stuck in the “fiction only” section that I am. I don’t think I’ve reviewed a single nonficton book on this blog. I don’t say this out of pride or anything. I really wish I liked nonfiction more than I do. There are a few exceptions to this, but usually it’s when books are thrust upon me my trusted friends and family. So, while I would never have picked up this book on my own, I’m so glad that our fellow bookclub librarian, Katie, recommended it! I found myself very much enjoying it, and while it isn’t changing my mind on nonfiction as a whole, that’s too big of an ask for any book.

I’ll also confess that I didn’t read this book in the traditional front-to-back method, and I really think this is one of the reasons I enjoyed it more than I would have otherwise. Instead, I picked a chapter here and a chapter there, skipping forward and backward through the book based on my interests. For example, I started with the “irregardless” chapter, because, yes, that word and all the controversy around it does intrigue me! From there, I found myself in a chapter document acronyms and how rarely the much bandied explanations for words’ origins having to do with acronyms is true. We’ve all probably heard of some acronym for the “f” word, for example. The author does an excellent job exploring why acronyms are so rarely involved with a word’s definition.

As I read, I mostly found myself gather ammo for word-related conversations. As a librarian and book lover, these are the exact sorts of disagreements and discussions that I regularly find myself in, and I loved getting some more detailed background knowledge on my side going forward. As Kate said, for this reason, I’m sure, our bookclub probably had more to say with regards to this book than we’ve had for many other books recently. In this way, this book is an excellent choice for other bookclubs out there. Especially for those that have members who may not be totally bought into nonfiction. I recommend my reading strategy, specifically, for those folks. I think I had an easier time than Kate just because of this. By hopping around, picking it up to read a chapter here and a chapter there, I never had to confront the general dismay about the long slog ahead that results from starting in the beginning, especially starting with a non-enthralled position.

I also really think that had I not found my calling as a librarian that working on a dictionary like this like may have been another dream job. I had an assignment in a publishing class back in undergrad to create an index for a book, and similar to that, dictionary work seems appealing nit-picky and focused on organization. I also would have had a lot of fun writing snarky answers to the people who wrote in with complaints about the inclusion of the word “irregardless” in the dictionary. Really, could I just have that job? Answering dictionary-related complaint mail?