The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon

Imagine a virus that affects our ability to speak and write, to communicate.  Anana's father has disappeared from his work as editor of the North American Dictionary of the English leaving only a cryptic message 'diachronic' and his speed dial display reads 'Hotline to Alice'.  The moment she sees this Anana knows something is very wrong, Alice is both a reference to Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland and a kind of literary code name he had for Anana.  Down the rabbit hole the story goes, she finds a small army of sweat shop workers in the basement destroying dictionaries, tries to get help from Bartleby who worked with her father, tries to deal with the aftermath of her breakup with ex Max and the onslaught of the word virus that steals language.  A really good read.

The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth

Forsyth meanders delightfully through the English language in a completely idiosyncratic and entertaining way, a perfect book for anyone who goes to look up a word in a dictionary and, like me, gets completely sidetracked by the other interesting words on the way.  The English language with all its idioms and history is a byzantine thing and Forsyth is a delighted child in a candy shop of words.

The Horologican: A Day's Jaunt Through The Lost Words Of The English Language by Mark Forsyth

 

A thoroughly entertaining romp through rare and obsolete words that are appropriate for different times of the day. Forsyth arranges his 19 chapters chronologically from waking to turning in for the night, taking the reader from 6am to 12 midnight, from dawn, dressing, breakfast and commute through work, lunch and procrastination to tea time, food shopping, going out and returning home to bed. This book was to me a delight, light and witty in tone but erudite in knowledge. Forsyth readably conveys his passion for words that beautifully express more exactly our daily mundane experiences. Thanks to him I can now confidently forecast that post Christmas lunch my husband will pass out wamble crompt on the sofa, a word that perfectly rolls in the mounth to onomatopoeically speak of overindulgence and concomitant lethargy.

Words Words Words by David Crystal


As a primer and brief introduction to the sublime world of words, of lexicographers and word hounds, this is a nice little book that sits well in the hand.  Crystal distils his encyclopaedic knowledge of epistemology into 6 fascinating sections

1. the universe of words, their number and how we learn them
2. the origin of words, their beginnings and construction
3. the diversity of words, worldwide diversity, specialist language, group speak
4. the evolution of words, births, deaths, changes and futures
5. the enjoyment of words, wordplay, word sound and games
6. becoming a word detective, how to take your interest further, further reading and how to estimate your personal wordhoard (vocabulary), both what you use everyday and what you understand but don's use regularly.

A good starting point which left me wanting more.

Some Reflections on Madness and Worlds / Words

It is curious how books that I have picked up have fitted together and made me reflect. These are arbitrary occurences but perhaps not so random as they may seem. The White Darkness and Timequake were both books that I had identified as ones I wanted to read and they happened to be available from the library at the same time, albeit from different libraries (we are a rural region and the library stock of books is spread over several small towns, storage and the mobile libraries, it is fun to visit unfamiliar ones). The Raw Shark Texts is my own, a book I bought a while ago and sits with the pile of other books set on their sides to accusingly remind me 'you meant to read me, well, come on'.

These three books are all in their own ways about worlds and words. The White Darkness deals in part with a man's belief in a hollow globe with spheres within spheres, accessed by holes at the north and south poles. It is a madness that drives him to kill and in his obsession drag the daughter of his dead partner to the south pole to access this hole. Her defence from the truth is in words, a litany of names for the different types of ice and the sculptures created by ice and wind that bewitch the eye and mind. I was listening to this on a PlayAway mp3 player, a device that allowed me to be listening to stories of the arctic whilst walking up rather less chilly roads but still cold November in Scotland. Both Sim and Victor are balanced on the edge of madness, Sim locked away in her mind with Titus, a madness that ultimately saves her, and Victor believing in something we're never quite sure isn't untrue, it is a darkness that makes us question our own sanity and ideas of obsession and truth

I had simultaneously been reading Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake, his quirky semiautobiographical musings on life, there's some really deep stuff in there but Vonnegut treads lightly, like Pratchett and Adams (Douglas) cloaking the intelligence in humour. Here there is no question, this is clearly science fiction and any kind of insanity is freely allowed. You can laugh at the madness.

In The Raw Shark Texts, which I devoured (no pun intended), the madness is unclear and we are constantly on quicksand. Hall brutally reminds us that as readers we are at the mercy of writers, especially when they are as compelling as this and I could not tear myself away from the unfolding terror. Who is to say that dementia is not the product of predators feeding on our memories, it can certainly feel like that when you touch on the horror, like a sore tooth, of the idea of losing your memories and therefore sense of what you are, what you did, what your values created and what you were responsible for. The idea of looking into a face of a beloved and all they are being gone, replaced by a blank minded stranger. The way Hall plays with text as well as the concepts of word/worlds is brilliant, and I thank Ballard that I'd read some of his stuff before reading this, I might not have coped with the swerves of unreality and Hall's demands that you hold two contradictory opinions of events (is it all in Eric's mind, or is it real) right up until the end.

With all three books the brink of madness is a subject, strange that I'd come to them together but I've learned not to question synchronicty too much, it comes because it does. Being reminded that our worlds are constructions of our perception can be terrifying until you realise that this is all we have and taking security in that, these worlds ARE our worlds and to live in them completely is all we can do in our limitations, Tralfalmadorians may pity us unable to see the great sweep of time but I like perception the way we have it...

The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

Eric Sanderson regains consciousness and breathing upon the carpet of a room he does not recognise and, on further probing within himself, without any memories whatsoever. A letter instructs him how to get to a Dr Randall who informs him that since he was traumatised by the death of his girlfriend Clio four years earlier he has suffered complete loss of memory, and that this is his 11th occurence. A room in his house is locked. Dr Randall warns him not to read the post that arrives through his door but eventually the Bluebeard moment occurs and Eric gives into the urge. He and us are then pitched into a world where the boundaries shift and Eric is pursued by a Ludovician shark, a conceptual predator that feeds on his memories and is determined to swallow him whole. Deeply moving, confusing, and very very intelligent