“The Bibliophile’s Dictionary: 2000 masterful words and phrases”, by Miles Westley

294 pages, Writer’s Digest Books, ISBN-13: 978-1582973562

First things first: Miles Westley’s The Bibliophile’s Dictionary: 2000 masterful words and phrases (not sure why that isn’t capitalized) is not your average dictionary; hell, it’s not even a reference work, but more like a book built for browsing, for opening at random and sampling whatever happens to fall before your eyes and running with it. This is because like any proper book about words The Bibliophile’s Dictionary is idiosyncratic and weird, organized roughly into categories but adamantly analphabetic (stumped you with that one, didn’t I? heh heh heh). I mean, c’mon: in what other book can you find “Ursuline” (an order of Nuns founded in 1535 at Brescia, Italy, by St. Angela Merici for the education of girls and the care of the sick and needy) in close proximity to “Knights of Columbus” (the world’s largest Catholic fraternal service organization founded by in 1882 by Michael J. McGivney in New Haven, Connecticut) or “Propinquity” (one of the main factors leading to interpersonal attraction) found so propinque to “Ultramontane” (situated on the other side of the Alps from the point of view of the speaker, but more likely advocating supreme papal authority in matters of faith and discipline). There’s no making sense of it; just have to go with the flow, bro. Really, just flip to a random page each night, absorb a few words that you never knew existed and then attempt to casually incorporate them into conversations with the unwashed public the following day. Voilà! The reaction written across people’s faces is worth every penny and then some. The furrowed eyebrow, the wrinkled nose, the subtle tilt of the head, the raised chin, the sudden and uncontrollable itch on the forehead, the fluttering of the eyelids, the deer in the headlights, that look of utter amazement, and on and on. The Bibliophile’s Dictionary is guaranteed to stump your friends and make you look smarter than you really are, a twofer if ever there was…um, one.