Dictionary Addict

I finished reading Isaacson's biography of Benjamin Franklin over the weekend. (I spent most of Friday sitting in the Whitetail ski lodge transported back to 18th century France where Franklin spent some of the last years of his life.) The book was very interesting and helped dispel some of the myths about Franklin and addressed some of the criticisms that have often been leveled against him. It is a highly readable biography of the first American who truly trusted in the American people to decide who should govern themselves.

I'm now reading - primarily - Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander. It's OK so far but the book is rife with 18th Century Royal Navy cant and jargon that can be difficult for a 21st Century landlubber to understand. To help me navigate through this thicket of lingo, I bought a companion volume to the Aubrey/Maturin series called A Sea of Words. It's basically an oversized glossary. The funny thing is I'm finding this nautical dictionary way more intestesting than the book itself. For every word I look up in A Sea of Words, I'm finding I spend 5 to 10 minutes looking up related words and browsing through words that just happen to fall under my eye. At this rate I'll be reading Master and Commander for years.

I have a similar problem with the real dictionary. My favorite dictionary of all time is The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. I adore this book and it would certainly be one of the books I'd take with me to a desert island. I figure all the other books are already in there. I've never understood how people can think dictionaries are boring. It's not at all uncommon for me to go get my dictionary to look up some word, get sidetracked for 30 or 45 minutes, and then completely forget to look up the word that brought me to the dictionary in the first place.

If I had a spare $900 I'd buy the OED. Now there's a trove.
K-