Welcome back to Goodreads Monday! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. As always, mine has been crazy! I hope things have been going well for you all. I am trying to get back to blogging because it is something that I really enjoy. I feel more myself when I am able to read and then share my thoughts. I will be that little old lady leading local book clubs…
Today I am going to show you another book that I am really looking forward to reading that I’ve not read yet. I know, I know…that does not mean much because that list is endless but that also means lots of these posts! Maybe you can get some ideas on what you want to read next.
The Dictionary of Lost Words 
Author: Pip Williams
Published: April 6th, 2021
Book Length: 376 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository (Use referral name Bibliophagist20)
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the “Scriptorium,” a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word “bondmaid” flutters to the floor. She rescues the slip, and when she learns that the word means slave-girl, she withholds it from the OED and begins to collect words that show women in a more positive light. As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.
Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. Based on actual events and combed from author Pip Williams’s experience delving into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary, this highly original novel is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world.
In this remarkable debut based on actual events, as a team of male scholars compiles the first Oxford English Dictionary, one of their daughters decides to collect the “objectionable” words they omit.
Let’s be honest…the last kind of book you thought to see on my TBR list is a historical fiction. Those are one of my least favorites! However, I am trying to branch out and read books from genres I don’t generally enjoy.
Sounds crazy right?!
My thought is that if I can find a book in the genre that I enjoy, maybe it will turn my opinion on it a bit. We will see.
This book sounds really good! I would love to know some of that hidden history. Too often things like this are lost or hidden and we never know of them. It does have to do with words and reading of sorts so I suppose that might be ok.
What are some books that are on your list on Goodreads? I’d love to know!
Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links.