Writers & Readers: Wordly

Thursday, January 22
7 PM reception; 7:30 readings; discussion after
$5/Free for members

A gathering for everybody who loves language and ideas. For people in writing groups or book clubs; for those passionate about writing, reading and thinking. Each evening has a theme, with time before and after for conversation and connecting.

This event is an investigation of the structural and sometimes obsessive relationship writers have to language.

Ammon Shea was uniquely prepared to undertake the task of reading the Oxford English Dictionary, having previously read Merriam Webster’s Third International Dictionary in its entirety. Although Reading the OED is organized into chapters based on an alphabetical list of interesting words (such as Petrichor(n) “the pleasant loamy smell of rain on the ground, especially after a dry spell.” Or Bayard(n) “a person armed with the self-confidence of ignorance”), it also tells the story of what happened to Shea during his undertaking, including one particularly alarming moment when, for several hours, Shea’s vision turned grey.

Michael Erard will read from Um...: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean as well as from his new work on language superlearners. Um… is not a guide to oration, nor is it a condemnation of those who are blunder prone:

I wrote Um... because I wanted to know what normal speaking is actually like, and I wanted to talk to people who worked with verbal blunders as a part of their daily lives … people whose first reaction to verbal blunders wasn’t to laugh at them, eliminate them, or denigrate people who made them. Along the way, I learned that the earliest recorded word of Thomas Edison’s that still exists is “uh,” that children begin making slips of the tongue at 18 months, and that Kermit Schafer’s tv and radio bloopers are still pretty funny. – Michael Erard

After the readings, Shea and Erard will hang around to answer audience questions and discuss all things wordly.