Рецензия на книгу

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  Jocelyn_Phoenix16 февраля 2026 г.

  This book delivers exactly what it promises - but it is also somewhat underwhelming.
  
  The author has read the entire Oxford English Dictionary and in each of the 26 lettered chapters he shares his experience or lexicography and dictionary history related tidbits - coupled with a few interesting words for that letter.
  
  The author writes well enough, the book is easy to read and can be quite fun, and some of the words and facts are indeed interesting. I also think reading a whole huge dictionary is kind of cool and was curious about the experience.
  
  But.
  
  A lot of the chapters are thin on substance and boil down to stuff like “I needed to write down words so I got a notebook”, “I couldn’t concentrate at home so I went to read in a library”, or “English has a lot of words”.
  
  Some of the words are really interesting but some are quite meh. At the end, the author mentions writing out many more and making various lists - some of them sound interesting but we see none of them.
  
  Overall, I think it’s a good piece of light language-related reading, but it doesn’t have enough substance (or weird-ass words) to be truly great.
  

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