The Dictionary of Lost Words

 

by Pip Williams (read by Pippa Bennett-Warner)
Library loan

 

 

Publisher's Summary
 
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip and, learning that the word means “slave girl,” begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men.

As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.

Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement and with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. Inspired by actual events, author Pip Williams has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary to tell this highly original story. The Dictionary of Lost Words is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world.

©2021 Pip Williams (P)2021 Random House Audio

 

Interesting thesis. Lousy execution.

While I agree with the author's thesis (he who controls the language, controls the narrative), the story was boring. I kept wondering where it was headed. Usually I don't mind a book that meanders along, but then again, at least I have a hint of where we are headed and the scenery along the way is interesting and engaging. The author could have made her point in half the time and perhaps even given us a more powerful story. I think that the only reason I finished the book was because I wanted to see where the author went with it.

ACCC: February, 2022

 

Main read:    Death in the Clouds  (read by Hugh Fraser)
Side read:  A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes (read by Samuel L. Jackson)
( no poll this month)

I  tore through both reads in less then 24 hours. Enjoyed them both thoroughly.

 

Publisher's Summary
From seat number nine, Hercule Poirot is almost ideally placed to observe his fellow air travelers on this short flight from Paris to London. Over to his right sits a pretty young woman, clearly infatuated with the man opposite. Ahead, in seat number 13, is the Countess of Horbury, horribly addicted to cocaine and not doing too good a job of concealing it. Across the gangway in seat number eight, a writer of detective fiction is being troubled by an aggressive wasp. Yes, Poirot is almost ideally placed to take it all in - except that the passenger in the seat directly behind him has slumped over in the course of the flight ... dead.

Murdered. By someone in Poirot's immediate proximity. And Poirot himself must number among the suspects.

This title was previously published as Death in the Air.
©1935 Agatha Christie Limited (P)2003 HarperCollins Publishers

 

While I enjoyed Death in the Clouds, I did have one big issue with it. This is the second book in a row where the perp was the almost-too-good-to-be-true love interest of the innocent ingenue.  But otherwise, a delightful locked room mystery -- because how much more locked can you get than an airplane in flight!

 

Publisher's Blurb

Academy Award nominee Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction, Star Wars films), fresh off the success of his uproarious, Audie-nominated performance of the mock children’s book Go the F**k to Sleep, delivers a swaggering, darkly-humored rendering of Chester Himes’ classic first novel. 

Himes, described by The Sunday Times as “the greatest find in American crime fiction since Raymond Chandler”, was no stranger to the world of crime: in his late teens and early 20s, he served seven years in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery, the confession to which was beaten out of him by the police. He delivers the tale of his hopelessly naïve hero suddenly finding himself on the run from a hypocritical and far-from-heroic police force with lurid violence and brutal humor. There is no voice better than Mr. Jackson’s to narrate this hardboiled story of love and crime, set in a richly imagined, mid-20th-century Harlem.

©1957 Chester Himes (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Listening to A Rage in Harlem as read by Samuel L. Jackson was a pure delight; he made the book sing. The book itself was a merry chase through Harlem's underworld of crime, complete with car chases and gruesome murders and very much in the style of the 1950s' down and dirty he-man, macho crime fiction that was being written at the time.