Obsessed with Wordle, the daily puzzle game exploding in popularity? Then you’ll enjoy reading these 12 books… after you finish your squares, of course!
The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon
In a world where the “death of print” has become a near reality, Anana Johnson, an employee at the North American Dictionary of the English Language (NADEL), searches for her missing father and stumbles upon the spiritual home of the written world and a pandemic “word flu.”
Word by Word : The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper
While most of us might take dictionaries for granted, the process of writing dictionaries is in fact as lively and dynamic as language itself. With sharp wit and irreverence, Kory Stamper cracks open the complex, obsessive world of lexicography, from the agonizing decisions about what and how to define, to the knotty questions of usage in an ever-changing language.
The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
The Professor and the Madman is an extraordinary tale of madness and genius, and the incredible obsessions of two men at the heart of the Oxford English Dictionary and literary history. With riveting insight and detail, Simon Winchester crafts a fascinating glimpse into one man’s tortured mind and his contribution to another man’s magnificent dictionary.
Dreyer’s English: Good Advice for Good Writing by Benjamin Dreyer
Adapted for younger audiences, an informative and engaging guide to writing and grammar provides expert coverage of how to use correct punctuation and style to write with better clarity and confidence.
Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris
A New Yorker copy veteran presents laugh-out-loud descriptions of some of the most common and vexing errors in language and usage, drawing on examples from classic literature and pop culture while sharing anecdotes from her work with celebrated writers.
The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams
An exhilarating and laugh-out-loud debut novel from a prize-winning new talent which chronicles the misadventures of a lovelorn Victorian lexicographer and the young woman put on his trail a century later to root out his misdeeds while confronting questions of her own sexuality and place in the world.
Follows the author, who was originally just a curious reporter and now a Scrabble fiend, as he becomes an expert Scrabble player and delves into the realm of Scrabble culture, where he encounters a vitamin-popping standup comic and the three-time champion who plays by Zen principles, and realizes that Scrabble is more than just a game on many different levels.
Recruited into an exclusive government school where students are taught the science of coercion to support a secretive organization of “poet” world manipulators, orphaned street hustler Emily Ruff becomes the school’s most talented prodigy before catastrophically falling in love, while a seemingly innocent young man is rendered a pawn in a dangerous power struggle.
Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss
A whimsically illustrated volume of the best-selling punctuation polemic features a colorful new foreword and 50 full-color drawings by an acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist that bring to life a variety of usage pitfalls.
A linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers playfully recounts what happens when the citizens of an island must rely on all their ingenuity to communicate in an increasingly limited language when the government progressively bans letters from the alphabet.
The former executive director of the National SCRABBLE’ Association describes the inner-workings of tournaments and the top players, provides a list of words that were once banned from the game and discusses the dearth of allowable vowel-less words.
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
Deciding to create her own dictionary — the Dictionary of Lost Words — Esme, who has collected “objectionable” words a team of male scholars omit from the first Oxford English Dictionary, leaves her sheltered world behind to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.
