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Ammon Shea is a total nerd.
Best of all, he’s not ashamed of it. He embraces his quirky (to some, but not to me) hobby of reading dictionaries (not to mention his voracious reading habits in general). Not only that, he takes it all to a new level by reading the OED cover to cover (or rather – covers to covers).
I applaud his humor, his wit and his self-deprecation because I love a good nerd, especially a self aware one.
I find books like Reading the OED completely and unabashedly undeniable. My only problem with them is that I wished I had written them, but these guys beat me to it! A.J. Jacobs’ The Know It All is one of my favorite books (of ALL TIME). I even found David Plotz’s Blogging the Bible an irresistible read (and I’m an atheist!). Shea calls the OED his Everest. He’s reading it because it’s there (which I would venture to guess is also why Jacobs and Plotz attempted their arguably insane reading mountains). I empathize with that kind of thinking.
[Author’s note: I’m taking off on a tangent today, so don’t be alarmed. The blog format will stay as usual, this is just a jaunt into a new direction. I’ve been sick for over a week, so you can blame the cold medicine if you wish. I certainly am. *I have not read this book* But I want to really, really badly. Unfortunately I will need to wait a) to get it from the library or b) until it comes out in affordable paperback to read it. But that doesn’t meant I can’t start talking about it. It’s a little thing we in the biz call buzz.]
I’ve only very recently become the kind of person who reads the NY Times Sunday Book Review. Before this, I had always found my books in a very haphazard, but still pleasantly random kind of way. Now I read reviews. I try to follow what’s new and exciting. Actually it’s taken some getting used to; it’s a little unsettling to be aware of books when they come out (or before) as opposed to picking up a stray paperback from a pile in a store. Moreover it’s not healthy for my book buying habit – because, for me, to be aware of the new hardcovers is to buy them.
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