There seems to be a bit of a trend of books about people doing pointless things (eg How To Sharpen Pencils); this is a harmless addition to the sub-genre. I’m sympathetic to people who set themselves mildly absurd reading projects, I’m sympathetic to people who suddenly discover that their eyesight is not quite as good as they thought, I’m sympathetic to philology and the derivations of words, and this book ticks all those boxes without stretching the reader very far. The 26 chapters each have a chapeau of a few pages of narrative about the reading process, or about Shea’s earlier life, or (not as much as I’d like) about how the OED itself came to be, followed by a few quirky words. I was a bit surprised that “moreish” is considered quirky – I think of it as pretty mainstream. But there you go; perhaps it’s something more on this side of the Atlantic.

Top unread non-fiction:
Peleponnesian War | Innocents Abroad | Terre des Hommes | The Hero with a Thousand Faces | Race of a Lifetime / Game Change | Proust and the Squid | The Tipping Point | Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl | Elementary Forms of Religious Life | Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man | History of Christianity | History of the World in 100 Objects | A Room of One’s Own | Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? | The Last Mughal | Reading the Oxford English Dictionary | Jane Austen | Homage to Catalonia | The Road to Middle Earth | Essence of Christianity | The Strangest Man