Just thinking about books gets me all excited. When was the last time you heard someone say that?
But it is the honest-to-gosh truth. I love reading more than just about anything else in the world. Writing my own stories? Well, let's say neck-and-neck, all right?
Writing about horror on my horror blog, What Evil Lurks In Men's Hearts I could not help but get thrilled anew by the memories of some of the great horror fiction I've read throughout my life. It made me want to rummage through my 20,000 + titles and find Something Wicked This Way Comes. Or that old yellow-bound hard cover of the complete H. G. Wells collection (how do you think I got these muscles? It was carrying around that humongous book as a teen).
And it reminded me just how precious books have always been to me. When I collected them by the dozens as a kid in elementary school through the Scholastic book service for school kids. The teacher would hand out those slips and I'd check darn near every book. Bless her heart Mom never made an objection - even when we were poor as the proverbial church mice because dear old Dad had run off with his favorite librarian mistress of the month ... but I digress.
I'd drag home bags and bags of SBS books. I read them again and again and I can still remember my favorites. About Helen Keller, scientists, boys from other planets, a girl who befriends the bad boy, Harriet Tubman, The Red Badge of Courage and umpteen books about girls and their horses.
Those questions that ask, "if you were stranded on a desert island, what book would you want with you?" Crap, they throw me into such a state because there's no way in hell I could pick one. Sure, OK, the complete Shakespeare. And my favorite novel of all time is Possession by A. S. Byatt. But then again ...
No. I'll stop there, as it is hopeless.
When I read one book, it invariably reminds me (for whatever reason) of another book I want to read, or re-read (I do that a lot, too, and given the number of titles in my personal library, I should not be re-reading anything if I expect to get through them all before Death knocks). I have a huge collection of biographies and histories of British monarchs. But start with one, and I realize I should have started with the prior monarch (how else can one get a grasp of the latter monarch's tiem?). Same thing with civil war histories. Can't start with Antietam - what battl came before? Ditto World War II. I once tried to start but realized that WWI led into WWII. But other events led to WWI, and so on and so forth and before you know it I was reading about Boudica and the Romans.
But the fact that I'd rather spend time with a good book that a human?
I think that about sums it up.
Welcome to a bibliomaniac's world. At least it's quiet ....
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
The Holy Grail
It costs $1,000. There are 20 volumes. It is the one, the only, Oxford English Dictionary. And I WANT IT.
Of course, I haven't got $1,000. Haven't got the space for 20 volumes, either, but I'd get rid of a chair if I had to. Instead, I started small. The fat paperback Oxford American Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus. Then I got the condensed, 2 (massive) volume $75.00 OED. That's when the hankering got really bad. I keep coming across ads, offerings, sales (imagine, for just $900 I can have the entire thing ... but I don't have $900 either).
I love dictionaries. Thesauri, too, if I'm going to make a full breast of it. I have numerous dictionaries, large and small, hardcover and paperback, etymological dictionaries, synonym and antonym dictionaries. Slang dictionaries. Foreign language dictionaries. American Heritage, Random House, Oxford, Websters and many more. Old and new. Dictionaries so old there is no reference to the atomic bomb. And so new they have entries for blogging (imagine that!).
But at the bottom of it all, its all about words.
It's rather like being a part of a secret society. We lust after words. We covet the dictionaries of others that are filled with words - words we crave. Words that, somehow, we can't truly touch or feel or experience unless we OWN them.
The legendary book about the compilation of the OED, The Professor and the Madman, details the initial operation that put together this massive undertaking and the sources from whence the selections were made (everyone was invited to suggest words for inclusion and one of the primary collaborators turned out to be a man sequestered in an insane asylum. And it continues to be a huge event - the annual revision of the OED. What words have evolved into a usage popular enough to warrant their inclusion in the bible of linguists? What words, sadly, have failed to meet that standard and must be abandoned? Arguments ensue. Debates proceed. There is always an American editor involved in the practice, but such jargon as applies to the internet, for example, and high-tech industries and current situations (witness the inclusion of WMD, after the misspent 8 years of the Bush presidency) will be included because of their popular appearance in everyday use.
Of course, sadly, not every word can be included. There are antiquated words - fun, amazing, ingenious words - that have been left out, abandoned by the literary wayside as the world moves on, embracing such words as are deemed au courant. Relevant. Can you imagine the number of volumes required to include every word in the English language that has ever been uttered or used? The words of Medieval London. Elizabethan London. 1776 US. 1100 Scotland. 1888 Dodge City. Words that will never be uttered again. Never be used in writing or known by the vocabulary-curious.
It makes me want to find those words. Investigate and unearth them and then use them. Speak them aloud. Write them down. Ensure that they will stay alive in the lexicographic universe. Prevent them from extinction. Even if it is only in my own mind that they live. Perhaps I will begin a journal. A word journal. A rescue mission, if you will, wherein I will record and save them. Keep the words safe for whosoever discovers my journals later. An alien, perhaps? Perhaps this being from another world will find my journal and believe these words to be the most important of words. Imagine a wealth of words disappearing, in favor of Middle English phrases, Regency slang or 1970's hip. Nodcock and groovy rule!
People whose business and hobby it is to study words - The Linguistic Society of America, for example - must lament these losses. Do they squirrel away old editions of dictionaries? Do they seek out the thesauri of days of yore? Are their homes repositories for a wealth of words?
I know I do my part. I have so many dictionaries and thesauri that I never want for a source for pronunciation, definition, etymology. And as I am my Mother's daughter, not a day goes by that I don't reach for one of these tomes. To look up a word, to confirm my belief about a tertiary definition of a word. To determine how, really, a word like "sepulchral" is pronounced. Or simply to find a word that means what I want to say more closely than any of the pedestrian choices that may immediately come to mind.
Am I peculiar? An oddity who would rather read a dictionary than watch a QVC show? Someone who would prefer to investigate a linguistical mystery than figure out who will be voted off the island?
Perhaps. But I am not alone. There are many others, however secluded and hidden. Subscribers to the magazine, Verbatim. Crossword puzzle afficianados. Writers. Poets. Scrabble players. People such as Ammon Shea, who spent an entire year reading the unabridged OED, cover to cover, wading through the "uns", the interminable "s" section - but who found a veritable treasure trove of knowledge about words, their use, their origin and his affinity for certain ones that just, well, tickled his fancy.
So I am in good company. Weirdos, one and all, but hey, weirdos with most excellent vocabularies.
Ka-ching.
Can you hear that? It's my new OED piggy bank. I'm saving up. One farthing, yen, Euro, deutschmark, penny, quid, pence, buck, franc - at a time.
Of course, I haven't got $1,000. Haven't got the space for 20 volumes, either, but I'd get rid of a chair if I had to. Instead, I started small. The fat paperback Oxford American Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus. Then I got the condensed, 2 (massive) volume $75.00 OED. That's when the hankering got really bad. I keep coming across ads, offerings, sales (imagine, for just $900 I can have the entire thing ... but I don't have $900 either).
I love dictionaries. Thesauri, too, if I'm going to make a full breast of it. I have numerous dictionaries, large and small, hardcover and paperback, etymological dictionaries, synonym and antonym dictionaries. Slang dictionaries. Foreign language dictionaries. American Heritage, Random House, Oxford, Websters and many more. Old and new. Dictionaries so old there is no reference to the atomic bomb. And so new they have entries for blogging (imagine that!).
But at the bottom of it all, its all about words.
It's rather like being a part of a secret society. We lust after words. We covet the dictionaries of others that are filled with words - words we crave. Words that, somehow, we can't truly touch or feel or experience unless we OWN them.
The legendary book about the compilation of the OED, The Professor and the Madman, details the initial operation that put together this massive undertaking and the sources from whence the selections were made (everyone was invited to suggest words for inclusion and one of the primary collaborators turned out to be a man sequestered in an insane asylum. And it continues to be a huge event - the annual revision of the OED. What words have evolved into a usage popular enough to warrant their inclusion in the bible of linguists? What words, sadly, have failed to meet that standard and must be abandoned? Arguments ensue. Debates proceed. There is always an American editor involved in the practice, but such jargon as applies to the internet, for example, and high-tech industries and current situations (witness the inclusion of WMD, after the misspent 8 years of the Bush presidency) will be included because of their popular appearance in everyday use.
Of course, sadly, not every word can be included. There are antiquated words - fun, amazing, ingenious words - that have been left out, abandoned by the literary wayside as the world moves on, embracing such words as are deemed au courant. Relevant. Can you imagine the number of volumes required to include every word in the English language that has ever been uttered or used? The words of Medieval London. Elizabethan London. 1776 US. 1100 Scotland. 1888 Dodge City. Words that will never be uttered again. Never be used in writing or known by the vocabulary-curious.
It makes me want to find those words. Investigate and unearth them and then use them. Speak them aloud. Write them down. Ensure that they will stay alive in the lexicographic universe. Prevent them from extinction. Even if it is only in my own mind that they live. Perhaps I will begin a journal. A word journal. A rescue mission, if you will, wherein I will record and save them. Keep the words safe for whosoever discovers my journals later. An alien, perhaps? Perhaps this being from another world will find my journal and believe these words to be the most important of words. Imagine a wealth of words disappearing, in favor of Middle English phrases, Regency slang or 1970's hip. Nodcock and groovy rule!
People whose business and hobby it is to study words - The Linguistic Society of America, for example - must lament these losses. Do they squirrel away old editions of dictionaries? Do they seek out the thesauri of days of yore? Are their homes repositories for a wealth of words?
I know I do my part. I have so many dictionaries and thesauri that I never want for a source for pronunciation, definition, etymology. And as I am my Mother's daughter, not a day goes by that I don't reach for one of these tomes. To look up a word, to confirm my belief about a tertiary definition of a word. To determine how, really, a word like "sepulchral" is pronounced. Or simply to find a word that means what I want to say more closely than any of the pedestrian choices that may immediately come to mind.
Am I peculiar? An oddity who would rather read a dictionary than watch a QVC show? Someone who would prefer to investigate a linguistical mystery than figure out who will be voted off the island?
Perhaps. But I am not alone. There are many others, however secluded and hidden. Subscribers to the magazine, Verbatim. Crossword puzzle afficianados. Writers. Poets. Scrabble players. People such as Ammon Shea, who spent an entire year reading the unabridged OED, cover to cover, wading through the "uns", the interminable "s" section - but who found a veritable treasure trove of knowledge about words, their use, their origin and his affinity for certain ones that just, well, tickled his fancy.
So I am in good company. Weirdos, one and all, but hey, weirdos with most excellent vocabularies.
Ka-ching.
Can you hear that? It's my new OED piggy bank. I'm saving up. One farthing, yen, Euro, deutschmark, penny, quid, pence, buck, franc - at a time.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
I Never Met A Book I Didn't Like
I'm a librarian's daughter. I blame that for my obsession with all thinks bookish. Of course, it probably has little to do with that. But for whatever reason, I am a book fiend. I once bought a humorous book that outlined all the symptoms of being a bibliomaniac. Getting rid of furniture in order to fit more books into one's home (except, of course, for the comfy reading chair). Lying to one's family about having been at the bookstore - claiming in fact to have been, for example, at a bar rather than Barnes & Noble. In fact, sneaking the books into the house not in the tell-tale green bags, but in a Victoria's Secret bag.
Well, I'm the poster girl for insane book buying. Just ask my credit card companies. They just LOVE me. And the sudden downturn in the publishing industry? Probably because I've maxxed out the old plastic.
That, and the house is bursting at the seams with books. How many, you ask? Oh, well, roughly, maybe .... 20,000? So, what, is that a lot?
There are LIBRARIES with fewer books.
But come on. I don't splurge on clothes (no wisecracks from the fashion conscious - I've got a better vocabulary than you do and I'm not afraid to use it) - I don't have one of those costly hobbies like a man in my life (or a teenager...don't get me started). I don't travel, or dine out, and Imelda would simply sob over the pitiful state of my shoe collection (sneakers? check. Winter boots? check. 1 pair of worn out flats because my arches have falled from carrying around bags of books, CHECK.)
Instead I buy books. I collect books. I would die rather than pick through the trash for a piece of furniture, but spy a pile of moldering books, I'M SO THERE!
Any subject. Any author. Any condition. I'm not picky. I love them all.
Other people get hit on by drug dealers? I get hit on by the guy hawking books....
Can't you see it? He sidles over, that twitchy face, those beady eyes darting back and forth in search of a copper - He gives me that little grin, leans closer, pulls open the jack and says in that rusty hissing voice...
"Hey, lady, wanna buy a book?"
Well, I'm the poster girl for insane book buying. Just ask my credit card companies. They just LOVE me. And the sudden downturn in the publishing industry? Probably because I've maxxed out the old plastic.
That, and the house is bursting at the seams with books. How many, you ask? Oh, well, roughly, maybe .... 20,000? So, what, is that a lot?
There are LIBRARIES with fewer books.
But come on. I don't splurge on clothes (no wisecracks from the fashion conscious - I've got a better vocabulary than you do and I'm not afraid to use it) - I don't have one of those costly hobbies like a man in my life (or a teenager...don't get me started). I don't travel, or dine out, and Imelda would simply sob over the pitiful state of my shoe collection (sneakers? check. Winter boots? check. 1 pair of worn out flats because my arches have falled from carrying around bags of books, CHECK.)
Instead I buy books. I collect books. I would die rather than pick through the trash for a piece of furniture, but spy a pile of moldering books, I'M SO THERE!
Any subject. Any author. Any condition. I'm not picky. I love them all.
Other people get hit on by drug dealers? I get hit on by the guy hawking books....
Can't you see it? He sidles over, that twitchy face, those beady eyes darting back and forth in search of a copper - He gives me that little grin, leans closer, pulls open the jack and says in that rusty hissing voice...
"Hey, lady, wanna buy a book?"
Anyway, join me as I indulge my vice. As I talk about the books I've bought, want to buy, the ones I've started reading, finished reading, forgot I was reading and the ones I have never forgotten (and a few I have).
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