Stranger than Fiction

For the first book of the 2022 NONFICTION READER CHALLENGE , I read Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries , by Kory Stamper, 2017, in the category Language. Kory Stamper is a lexicographer for Merriam-Webster dictionary and writes about her experiences there by focusing on different words she has worked with and how they reveal peculiarities of the English language. In particular, it is quite a challenge to write a definition of a word, and she describes this in detail that is both fascinating and funny. She also reveals a lot of information about how a dictionary is created and updated, reflecting the changing nature of language. Each chapter focuses on one word (which is also the title of the chapter) to illustrate how it reveals some aspect of working with language. For example, the chapter “Irregardless” is subtitled “On Wrong Words” (and I was surprised to find out that she proves irregardless is not a wrong word!). The chapter “Bitch” is “On Bad Words;” “Nuclear” is ...

  At the beginning of 2021 I decided to join the Nonfiction Reader Challenge 2021, which I read about on the book blog Book’d Out. I decided to become a “Nonfiction Know-It-All” by reading 12 nonfiction books, one in each category listed on that website. I also read other nonfiction books, which I reviewed on this blog, but the ones for the Challenge (in this order) were: 1. Biography: The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (Hallie Rubenhold) 2. Inventions: Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (Dava Sobel) 3. Food: Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil (Tom Mueller) 4. Indigenous Cultures: From Black Land to Fifth Sun (Brian Fagan) 5. Wartime Experiences: The Norman Conquest (Marc Morris) 6. Oceanography: The Sea Around Us (Rachel Carson) 7. Travel: Neither Here Nor There (Bill Bryson) 8. Disease: The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, The ...