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Credit: doubledaybooks
đź‘‹ Hello readers!đź‘‹ Friends, we did it. We got through the first month of 2021; the new year is underway. So far it has been... quite like 2020, but I remain hopeful. One thing that consistently put me in a good mood was the utterly charming novel The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams, and now I'm so happy to share it with you for our February read!
The book follows two disillusioned characters: In 19th century London, lexicographer Peter Winceworth sneaks fake words into Swansby's Encyclopaedic Dictionary; in the current day, young intern Mallory is tasked with weeding out these fictitious entries, while also contending with daily death threats from an anonymous caller and coming to terms with her sexuality. It's a sharp-witted, big-hearted, hilarious story of meaning and purpose that lovers of language will relish. Get your copy, and read the first chapter here.
Over in the Facebook group, we'll be posting discussion threads throughout the month, following this schedule:
And of course we have our giveaway! Doubleday is giving away 10 copies with signed bookplates sent separately (US-only, sorry), and Libro.fm is offering 5 free audiobook downloads. I'm listening to the audiobook and absolutely loving it.
Want a shot at one of these great prizes? Respond to this email by Thursday, February 4, 6 p.m. ET, and tell us about a book that makes you happy. Winners will be selected randomly. Good luck!
Happy reading, Arianna
đź“š Behind the Book đź“š
We asked Eley to tell us a bit about how The Liar's Dictionary came to be. Here's what she had to say. Credit: BuzzFeed News; Antonio Olmos, Doubleday The Liar’s Dictionary sprang from a fascination with copyright traps, and in particular fictitious entries that exist within dictionaries and encyclopedias. These so-called ghost entries are entirely made-up by editors to catch out any potential pirating of a dictionary's text. The most famous example is probably the fake 'Lillian Virginia Mountweazel', an entry that appears in 1975's New Columbia Encyclopedia. She never existed, and 'she' was conjured entirely to act as a copyright trap, but even her name is so evocative and compelling – the user of the dictionary unwittingly becomes a reader of fiction, with a stake in her story! It tickled me to think that lexicographers might be tasked with plucking words or definitions out of the air for this purpose. In my mind's eye, dictionaries were far more rigid, dry affairs and concerned with the 'fixing' of language, not this more creative, scurrilous relationship with creating words.
The idea that fictitious and in many ways nonsensical words existed as secret coded messages within otherwise trustworthy works of reference implied dictionaries might be sites of tension, frisson, and mischief. I started researching or noodling around with my perception of dictionaries as somehow infallible, as well as the power structures that are in play in terms of language and our access to it. How does a word 'enter' a dictionary? Who gets to decide what words are left out, or how a word is 'correctly' defined? How can we ever control language, and are our attempts to do so done through care or through a compulsion to control or dominate? I thought that an absurd portrait of language's use and misuse, and a combination of narratives that might lay such absurdities bare, might be an energetic way of exploding the straight notion of a dictionary as a sterile or passive object but rather something connected to ambition, hubris, affection, and desire.
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