Happy World Scrabble Day!: Books for Word Lovers

The Gormenghast Trilogy, by Mervyn Peake
If it’s a luscious new vocabulary you’re after, run straight to Gothic literature. Specifically to one of my favorite entries in the genre, the fantasy-cum-psychological labyrinth of the Gormenghast trilogy. This trilogy strives to encapsulate the slow decay of a family and a society, not to mention the grotesque effect living amidst said decay can have on the soul. This kind of story needs precise words to relate such an interior experience, and if ever there was an author I would trust to know the perfect word to describe the back hallways of a crumbling castle so intimately your skin crawls, it’s Mervyn Peake. His words will surprise and delight you, and, best of all, there’s a pretty good chance your Scrabble opponent has never heard of them.

Orkney, by Amy Sackville
This book has flown under the radar of a lot of readers, for reasons I cannot fathom. Word lovers should not let it pass by unnoticed! It tells the tale of a couple’s honeymoon to the Orkney islands, taken after the new young wife of a professor pleads with him to “take her to the sea.” The strength of this dreamlike tale is its ability to envelop the reader in the mysterious atmosphere of the islands, making them feel a part of an unfolding psychodrama. This is almost entirely due to the seductive nature of Sackville’s lush, layered prose, which explores not only the more gorgeous corners of the English language (no less than fifteen words are used to describe the shade of blue just before sunset), but also the particular dialect of the islands. I left this book with the feel of the Orkney skreever wind on my face, and many new words for my next round of Scrabble.

The Devil’s Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce
For the less romantic among us, Ambrose Bierce offers a word lover a delightful dash of reality. This humorous classic takes everyday, well-known words and offers alternative, lesser known, hilarious definitions for the snarky cynic in you. No word is safe! Bierce takes on everything from common human characteristics (selfish: “devoid of the consideration for the selfishness of others”) to our most treasured philosophical concepts (love: “a temporary insanity curable by marriage”). Not even the seemingly innocuous sweater is safe, becoming “a garment worn by a child when its mother is feeling chilly.” Bierce takes words you thought you knew and makes them interesting and memorable again, hopefully ensuring you’ll spot that possible 42-pointer at your next Scrabble tournament.

Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
It may all be “words, words, words,” as the Danish Prince tells us, but what gorgeous words they are. There’s a reason this is perhaps the most interpreted of all Shakespeare’s works. He fills this story of loss and endless contemplation with words that say what they mean, yet are ambiguous enough that we’re still arguing over them 400 years later. (Does Hamlet know or not that anyone is listening when he contemplates whether to be or not to be?) Whatever your interpretation, we can agree it’s the absolute feast of words, placed just so, that keeps us coming back for more. And hey, in your Scrabble game, I can almost guarantee you no one is going to try to use “perchance” before you do.

Landmarks, by Robert MacFarlane
Robert MacFarlane is a Cambridge university professor of 19th-century literature, with a focus on the presence of landscape and its relation to the self in English works of the period. His books (The Old Ways, The Wild Places ) not only explore the time period, but detail his own journeys through, and interactions with, an atlas of varied landscapes. His latest book, Landmarks, offers a record of the fruits of all this labor, which is, in the end, words. MacFarlane has collected hundreds of words inspired by place and nature from all over the British Isles and the world: tiny words from local dialects used to describe small, beautiful, and particular things, words that are presently vanishing into history. He records gorgeous words such as the Gaelic eicsir, “a ridge of glacial deposits marking the course of a river that flowed under the ice of the last glaciation;” zwer, hailing from the country of Exmoor, which signifies, “the sound made by a covey of partridges taking flight;” or one he learned from a Western Isle painter: landskein, which refers to “the braid of blue horizon lines on a hazy day.” This book is a gorgeous, vocabulary-expanding work for any word lover. There is even a blank space in the glossary to “hold the place-words that have yet to be coined.” Word-loving, observant readers may contribute their own entries to MacFarlane’s growing treasure trove of Scrabble chestnuts.
What other books celebrate the beauty of words?