The OED

MY first meaningful awareness of the Oxford English Dictionary was in the mid-2000’s when I started reading David Foster Wallace. He’s become one of my favorite authors, but damn if he wasn’t making me look up words constantly. Unsurprisingly, it turned out he was a dictionary fan in general and of the OED in particular.  When I first vaguely ideated acquiring it, DW promptly disavowed me of it- to the effect of where the hell are we going to put it? The below being our living room prior to 2012

So that notion lay dormant even after a 2012 home remodel to accommodate our growing book collection, 

Forward to the pandemic markedly limiting our activities while increasing our reading and finding another author- Annie Dillard whose vocabulary required frequent dictionary use. Yes, this is 2020 when it’s simple enough to google the word or use a dictionary app.  But in the meantime, in reading Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman, the LA Public Library’s 2016 celebration of the OED along with other periodic references to it. the OED went from ideation to plan.

Making room for 20 volumes was as they say necessary but not sufficient. It also needed to be accessible and in a setting where it can be used- with a flat surface to rest an open volume and with good lighting to read comfortably. This is the new shelving and books.

The read comfortably part ruled out the compact version requiring a magnifier. 

DW wasn’t happy at first with making the existing display spaces for photos/artwork smaller, the below being the before photo

She eventually humored me, after negotiating for a future project. Ordering individual used volumes through eBay, Biblio and Abes instead of a new complete set was time consuming but worth the savings. The shelving was straight forward with the only challenging aspects involving the recessed light.

The only wrinkle was installing the recessed lighting- a simple task requiring a bit of router work. 

 Hiding the wiring to the electrical outlets and for on/off operation without hiring an electrician and patching wall plaster took a bit more work but also was not too bad.

I had also, in the interval, purchased the concise OED edition in two volumes. It's a nice edition used but in very good condition and only missing the case which was not important to me.

The main advantage aside from being, well, concise, is it's a 2007 edition. It seemed more practical (I know- incongruous in this context) than getting the additions to the 1989 volumes (which are themselves dated as they were last published in 1997. In the reference material department, my remaining “want” is the OED Thesaurus which I have not been able to find used.