Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

An obsessive word lover's account of reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary, hailed as "the Super Size Me of lexicography."

"I'm reading the OED so you don't have to," says Ammon Shea on his slightly masochistic journey to scale the word lover's Mount Everest: the Oxford English Dictionary. In 26 chapters filled with sharp wit, sheer delight, and a documentarian's keen eye, Shea shares his year inside the OED, delivering a hair-pulling, eye-crossing account of reading every word.

The New York Times - Nicholson Baker

an oddly inspiring book about reading the whole of the Oxford English Dictionary in one go…Shea's book offers more than exotic word lists, though. It also has a plot. "I feel as though I am eating the alphabet," he writes halfway through, and you want him to make it to the end. This is the "Super Size Me" of lexicography.

Ammon Shea read his first dictionary, Merriam Webster's Second International, ten years ago, and followed it up with the sequel, Webster's Third International. He has been reading dictionaries, lexicons, and glossaries ever since. He lives surrounded by large, old books.