Title: Urban Dictionary
Author: Aaron Peckham
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 343
Rating: 7/10
Aaron Peckham – Mo’ Urban Dictionary
Aaron Peckham is the founder of UrbanDictionary.com, and this book is his first compilation of the best of the best user-submitted words to join the site’s database. As such, it’s basically a physical dictionary for street slang, although it’s already kind of out of date.
It’s fun, just like the website is – I wouldn’t say that the words included here are actually the best of the best, but the author has at least weeded out most of the rubbish ones, even if he’s not really the author because all of the submissions were crowdsourced from the community.
Imagine, if you will, somebody hitting a big ‘random‘ button a couple of thousand times, logging all of the results that came up, and then alphabetising them and putting them into book form. That’s basically what we have here, and I’m not saying that that’s a bad thing. After all, isn’t a regular dictionary pretty much the same thing?
Aaron Peckham
So yeah, buy this if you fancy a bit of a laugh and you’ve used the site before, or if you grew up using it like I did. Who knows? If you’re a regular user, you might even see your own definition in there. But the chances of that are pretty slim, seeing as there are so many words on the site and this book was published in 2005, so you’d need a historical entry to make the roster.
Still, it’s worth owning, if only to show to your (geeky) friends. For a bit of extra fun, claim that the book came out before the website and see if they buy it. And if you enjoy reading and flicking through it, then who knows? Perhaps you’ll even buy the sequel – I know I did! No idea if there was a third book though, I kind of lost interest after that. The gimmick only works for so long, and for different lengths of time for different people. Good luck, folks.
Urban Dictionary
John Williams – Stoner | Review
Title: Stoner
Author: John Williams
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 298
Rating: 5/5
I wasn’t too sure what to expect from this, and I basically picked it up because I saw a beautiful copy of it in a charity shop and then kept it on my shelves for a while until my BookTube friend Mara mentioned she was picking it up and I asked her if she fancied a buddy read.
I’m glad that it gave me the motivation to pick this up, because it turned out to be pretty much the perfect novel. Sure, it was bleak and sad throughout, but I like that from books and so I wasn’t exactly complaining. I also thought it did an excellent job of telling the story of Stoner’s life from start to finish.
If you’re looking for a plot-driven read then you should probably look elsewhere, because that’s not what this is. The good news is that I tend to prefer plot-driven reads to character-driven reads, but I thought this was fantastic despite my personal preferences, so there might still be hope for you.
I think what Williams did well was to show some very human characteristics in some very flawed characters. I even liked reading about Edith, Stoner’s wife, even though she was kind of a terrible person. Because she was a part of Stoner’s story and we follow his wife from start to finish, we can see how she becomes the way she ends up being. The same is true of his daughter, too.
Then there’s the commentary on the first and the second world wars, and you really feel their impact in the small community of Stoner’s university. This is a contender for my top ten books of the year.
Click here to buy Stoner.