Two small, nearly matching books have stood on my desk for some fifty years, with my name, dating back to college, printed inside. One is the Concise Oxford Dictionary (6th edition). It is based on the 26-volume Oxford English Dictionary, and it looks like an ordinary-sized book. I was surprised to open the one-volume dictionary the other day and find that it contains 1,367 pages. The sixth edition, edited by J.B. Sykes in 1976, is based on the original First Edition edited by H.W. Fowler and his brother F.G. Fowler in 1911. And when I say “edited” in the latter case, I mean the Fowlers did all the work of assembling the dictionary. It took years. 

The distance between Mt. Rainier, in Washington State, and Mt. Adams may not seem like a particularly important question. For reasons that I find inexplicable, you may not be dying to know the answer. It’s just something out there that doesn’t affect your life, or so you may suppose. But to me it’s vital, for reasons I’ll explain. Vital as in important, and vital as in life-giving. 

James Joyce’s “Dubliners,” from 1914, is pretty widely regarded as the greatest collection of short stories in the English Language. I can’t think of a better one, though I’m deeply impressed by the stories of a contemporary Irish author, Claire Keegan. And Joyce’s culminating story, “The Dead,” is the longest, best-known, and possibly the greatest of the group.