Thank you to Sally Ashburn for hosting at her absolutely lovely home, it was just great! And we had a short but interesting talk about The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. It starts with the early years of creating the Oxford English Dictionary, an effort of gargantuan proportions at the time, run by a collection of professorial men, focused on the words used in written language - by men.
Among them all, Esme, the daughter of one of the men selecting and defining words, grows up literally at the feet of the activity and is smitten with words, so much so that she takes them for her own collection. That finally catches up with her when the word "bondmaid" is found to be missing from the OED, pointed out by a reader, and all suspicion goes to Esme.
As it turns out, she does have the missing word in her private box of words. That word, and her relationship with the housemaid Lizzie, lead her to find her own words, this ignored by men, used by women, that define their lives.
Interesting, fun to read, historical, good! It had an interesting perspective, a new take on who gets to read the history, or in this case, the language. Not our best option, not our worst, it was very readable.
And so on to our next book which is The Widow Clicquot by Tilar Mazzeo. This is an amazing, inspirational story about an indomitable woman who accomplished the all but impossible for her time, being a successful entrepreneur.
We are scheduled for March 10, at 6:30 pm. My notes say we will be at Wendy's but I will confirm.
The April book is Lessons by Ian McEwan for those who want to read ahead. See you all in March!