Lookee!

This isn't a made-you-look joke (maybe only because I didn't think of it until now). But you may not be as excited as this would-be Epicurean (I think I'm slipping the other way, though, into Stoicism. Or miserism) when I quit stalling and just tell you. A book, two books! Yes, and...? This is a blog about books. Well one's a dictionary-cum-language guide and the other a seminal feminist work. Do you see?!

This silence perturbs me... It is a simple question.

What was that? Your silence is a sign of trust? Nice catch. Because there is nothing strange about me slobbering over these books, as you know. Words are so embedded in the way we interpret the world, as people and societies. And one little book holds all or most or, okay, some of them - did you know the most comprehensive version is 20 volumes long?

And this dictionary contains notes about the usage of the word, and not just an idiom or two listed in italics and the etymology. There are columns and columns making pages and pages of notes. Just on one word at a time. It took one entry before I popped the thing under my left arm:

except, excepting, except for ... except is preferable to  excepting and except for as the preposition meaning 'excluding'. Excepting would be slightly unidiomatic... and except for slightly informal, and both are best avoided.

The entry continues for one more page. Yep, that was it. The moment I fell. (Not into Stoicism. I was in the second-hand bookshop hiding away from... it.) There is more, though, fear you not! Being second-hand, it is old. An old, hardcover Reader's Digest edition, printed in black and white ink. A first edition and the start of a library of such things.

Actually, an addition to a growing library of such things. Being an editor, I am armed with several versions of the same dictionary, as well as style guides,an online subscription to a style manual, spelling guides, punctuation guides, dictionaries per subject and more general books about language. So, I suggest you accept my changes with good grace and back away, barbarians! Wait, no, wrong audience.

The thrum of words caught between a cover, the weight of the book and the smoothness of its cover in my hands... The book hunter's elusive reward. And here it was. Here it is. It has been too long, my friend.

Not one, but two, friends. The other is a ragged-looking paperback. B format, if that means anything to you. It looks like those orange and white Penguin editions from the 80s.White spine. Bolded title. The author's name is roman type.  The cover black as a background to a single image in the foreground. Lines of praise on the back.

The cover image is horrifying, to be honest. I don't do well with... this sort of thing, so I almost put it back. An illustration of a woman's skin hanging from a pole, in the shape of a pair of dungaree-shorts. Even the implication of violence makes me queasy. Which is, I realised, the point. Not convinced, I opened to the contents page. Every chapter has a one-word theme and heading such as these:

LOVE - Egoism

SOUL - The stereotype

BODY - Bones

I will not go into my views on feminism in today's, enlightened society (except to say that all sorts of '-isms' are institutionalised (that's my politician word) and bred into us unwittingly (that's my writer's phrase)) (oh and that there is evidence, let's talk after class). You know, I'm already angry, just writing that. Just angry enough to... do nothing, I guess.

Nothing, except read these books, and think about their arguments, and craft some of my own, and write another book.

Maybe you do think I tricked you. If I were you, I probably would. Because I'd be you and not me, the me who collects dictionaries and looks up to stringent feminists. The you that I'd be would really still be you and you have other obsessions and opinions, dreams and horrors. Unfortunately though, and in defiance of the inflated claims of digital revolutionaries, this is one-sided conversation.