#The Dictionary of Lost Words

[nooronclouds]

[aseaofquotes]

Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words

[bellasbookclub]

Reccer Spotlight: Miriam!

The Dictionary of Lost Words

All Systems Red

To Be Taught, If Fortunate

Ducks, Newburyport

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Miriam's recs are all a wide variety of lengths and genres! Would You Rather pick up a sci-fi novella or stream-of-consciousness litfic you could use as a blunt instrument? Full text available in their tab of the Bella’s Book Club Summer Reading ‘24 Reclist.

more info on BBC Summer Reading 2024

more Reccer Spotlights

[razreads]

Women don’t have to live lives determined by others. They have choices, and I choose not to live the rest of my days doing as I’m told and worrying about what people will think. That’s no life at all.

Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words

[the-final-sentence]

‘For a while, this beautiful, troubling word belonged to my mother.’

Pip Williams, from The Dictionary of Lost Words

[studentbyday]

aaahhhhh at the rate i'm going i'll finish the dictionary of lost words before the new year but as i usually do, i get impatient and read ahead a little bit and it gets sadder?!?!?! why oh why did it have to include WW1 in the story? 😭😭😭😭😭

i woke up feeling good. but now there is the heaviness of sadness in my chest, weighing me down.

can i finish it??? probs not today. ooohhhh i just want the ending to be happy but given the way the author has gone with the story so far, i think it will be bittersweet.

i only like bittersweet in coffee or chocolate. never to describe events in a life, real or fictional.

[writing-biting]

RIP Esme, you would've loved Urban Dictionary.

[andreabadgley]

It’s Christmas Eve and I can read all day if I want to.

[creator-of-calm-queer-chaos]

That moment when you’re reading a book and there are two women who live together and for half the book you think they’re lesbians and then it says they’re sisters and you’re just like OH SHIT NO BACKTRACK I DO NOT SHIP YOU TWO NEVERMIND FORGET ALL OF THAT

[bshocommons]

I was winded, unable to speak from the vacuum that had just been created in my chest. It wasn’t just a lack of breath; it was an inadequacy of words. I had a feeling that I understood precisely, but had no words for.

Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words

[ani-talwar]

Starting The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. Loving the writing style so far, very poetic and emotional:

‘Some words are more important than others- I learnt this, growing up in the Scriptorium. But it took me a long time to understand why’

[elliepassmore]

The Bookbinder review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: history, historical fiction, women's stories, WWI

The Dictionary of Lost Words review This is a great companion to Dictionary of Lost Words, though both could be read as a standalone without there being any issues. Tilda features fairly prominently in this book and we do see Gareth and a brief cameo of Esme. I liked getting to see familiar characters, even if Gareth + Esme's story drove home the tragedy in a different way. I especially liked seeing Women's Words and how much it impacted Peggy! This book picks up around the start of WWI and pretty much follow the course of the war, with a couple chapters taking place afterward and depicting the experience of recovery. The Belgian refugees play a big part of Peggy's story, as well as that of her twin sister, Maude. They forge different connections to the newcomers, but each finds their lives transformed by those relationships. The Spanish Flu also comes in and we get to see how it impacts things at the Bindery as well as Peggy and Maude's lives more personally. It was definitely interesting to see Peggy's struggles getting into Oxford. As a woman who did get into Oxford (graduate school, and Pembroke, not Somerville; also I declined admissions, lol), it was strange to read about all the hoops Peggy had to jump through just to be able to secure her spot. Not just one test, but two, with "Ancient bloody Greek" as one of the subjects, is quite a bit just to get in and study English lit. I really liked how Williams made this a commentary on barriers to entry and how Peggy was able to recognize that the entry exams were just another way to prevent non-aristocratic women from being able to reach for the kind of education offered at Oxford. Oxford's difficult admissions process also ties into the suffragette movement. I didn't know that when Britain passed the law to allow women to vote that it only included certain women and only at the age of 30. Tilda is more closely tied to Peggy and Maude due to her romantic relationship with their late mother and so Peggy has much closer view of the suffragette movement than Esme did. Peggy supports suffrage but also sees the injustice of the bill being pushed prior to/during WWI and how it connects to her own struggles to get into Oxford. Peggy also recognizes how unfair the bill is to the women around her in the Bindery and at home who also don't have a higher education and aren't looking to get into Oxford. Peggy is an interesting character to follow. She's worked at Clarendon Press as a bindery girl since she was ~12, though she dreams of being a Gown in Somerville, Oxford's women's college. She also feels a great responsibility for her twin sister, Maude, who is autistic and communicates through a kind of echolalia. When the war breaks out, Peggy feels she needs to do something and so volunteers to help with the Belgian refugees being housed in Oxford. She comes to enjoy her work and what she feels is freedom from watching over Maude. Peggy clearly has a big heart and big dreams, and she's acutely feels the barriers preventing her from reaching her goals. I liked that Williams made it clear that Peggy loved Maude, but that at times she wishes her twin could be more self-sufficient. At the same time, Peggy gets very jealous when someone new comes into Maude's life and begins caring for her in the way Peggy is used to. It's definitely a real thing that happens with sibling pairs where one sibling requires more accommodations and care, and even though I didn't always agree/like Peggy's thoughts about Maude, it did show a realistic way of coping and helped to show both Peggy's and Maude's growth over the course of the book. There were so many people supporting Peggy throughout her journey. Maude is a big supporter, even if Peggy doesn't always recognize it, and Mrs. Stoddard, the head supervisor of the women's section of the Bindery, is another person who greatly champions Peggy. Gwen, a Somerville student Peggy meets volunteering, may be ditzy and doesn't always see her own privilege, but she does introduce Peggy to important Somerillian people and she goes to bat for Peggy and pulls some strings to make it clear to some of the Somerville leaders that Peggy would be a good candidate for both admissions and a scholarship, both of which do open doors for her. I liked how much community was present in this book and how much the women supported each other. Maude may use echolalia to communicate, but she is very observant and good at reading people. She's particularly good at understanding the things people do vs. don't want to talk about and is a comforting influence to one of the Belgian women. Maude also seems to understand just how much Peggy needs her and for the most part is able to accept that role. She's very supportive of Peggy's dreams and I liked seeing them reverse roles when Peggy was studying for the Oxford entrance exams. Instead of Peggy making sure Maude got food and got outside, it was Maude making sure Peggy ate and didn't burn herself out. I enjoyed seeing Maude get the chance to grow into the person she was. Lotte is one of the Belgian refugees and quickly bonds with Maude. Shortly after her arrival she and a few other women begin working at the Bindery and Lotte is paired up with Peggy and Maude, though it's clear from the start she prefers Maude. Lotte's story is a sad one, and while she opens up to Maude pretty easily, it takes her much longer to open up to Peggy, and seemingly only through a 3rd party. She struggles with what happened in Belgium throughout the book and and there are some moments when her PTSD flares. Bastiaan is a Belgian soldier injured during the German invasion. He's one of the soldiers Peggy helps in her volunteer work and the two of them become friends, and then more, during that time. Bastiaan is another person who supports Peggy's dreams and he seems to understand Maude as well. I liked Bastiaan's mannerisms and how gentle he was. Like Lotte, Bastiaan is also dealing with ghosts and struggles with what happened before they were evacuated to England, particularly since he sees himself as someone who should've been able to protect Belgium and its people. I liked Bastiaan and Peggy together. They're able to open up to each other in a way they can't to others, and I liked seeing how they helped each other and how they grew together. Their relationship also shows the struggle and balance that women had to face between education and a career vs. romantic love and a family, particularly if the women were lower class and didn't have family money to fall back on. Peggy loves Bastiaan, but she also wants more out of life. Bastiaan also loves Peggy, but he knows his future isn't in Engand. Thus, they reach something of an impasse. Despite that, their relationship ends the story on a positive and hopeful note (I suspect it's long-distance, though Williams doesn't say explicitly) and I can definitely see them finding a good middle ground where Peggy can have her career and Bastiaan can have his. Tilda, as mentioned, also shows up in this one, though she's more present in letters than in person due to her being in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) and deployed to France. It's clear how much Tilda cares for Peggy and Maude, and as the book unfolds it becomes clear that Tilda and the girls' mom were romantically involved and that Tilda played a big role in the girls' lives. It was nice to see them together as a family, and I liked seeing how Tilda was with Peggy and Maude. I also think it was clever to include Tilda's letters at the end of some of the chapters so that we could get an inside view into what things were like in France. Williams does not pack her punches and Tilda's letters make the brutality and tragedy of the war even more clear than Peggy's own experiences volunteering do. Overall, I really enjoyed this book and getting to see things through Peggy's eyes. I think Esme's story packed a more emotional punch than Peggy's, but I still felt deeply for the people in this story and the circumstances that brought them together. The book ends on a happy note and the characters (mostly) seem satisfied with where they've ended up.

[bellasbookclub]

Reccer Spotlight: Eden!

The Essex Serpent

The Lord of the Rings (series)

Dracula

Frankenstein

The Dictionary of Lost Words

Eden's recs include classic horror, historical fiction, and high fantasy. Full text available in their tab of the Bella's Book Club Summer Reading '23 Reclist!

more info on BBC Summer Reading 2023

more Reccer Spotlights

[razreads]

Words are like stories […] They change as they are passed from mouth to mouth; their meanings stretch or truncate to fit what needs to be said.

Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words

[bitesizebookreviews]

The Dictionary of Lost Words

The Dictionary of Lost Words

Pip Williams

384 pages

Affirm Press, 2021

Words change over time, you see. The way they look, the way they sound; sometimes even their meaning changes. They have their own history.

In the year 1901, six year old Esme is playing under the table in the “scriptorium” in Oxford England. The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is being written, and Esme’s widower father is one of the lexicographers. That day, a slip of paper with the word ‘bondmaid’ falls under the table and Esme secrets it away to a box in her bedroom. Over the years, Esme becomes a collector of words - both through theft from the scriptorium, but also from listening to people. 

As Esme ages and befriends an actress suffragette, she realizes that the words that fail to make it into the dictionary are just as worthy as the ones that do. That the words used by the lower classes and used more exclusively by women may not be what is considered scholarly, but they are important. And so she writes The Dictionary of Lost Words in the hopes of creating some sort of written history for these words. 

There is so much to love about this book. Many of the characters (though probably not Esme) are based on real people, including James Murray who was the original editor of the OED, and Ditte, Esme’s Aunt who was a prolific volunteer for the book. But where it really shines is in the author’s clear love of language. 

[amorinarose]

Chilling with Books Corner May 2023, Julia Blake, long roads and hiccups

May came and went far too quickly. I have been caught up with editing and so many other things. The result is I am blogging later than I intended despite a promise to myself about maintaining a routine. Unfortunately, hiccups come at the oddest times and if you let them upset you they take forever to disappear. Everything becomes a long road to travel. The truth is I didn’t seem to accomplish…