Challenge Corner discussion

In 1901, the word ‘Bondmaid’ was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the ‘Scriptorium’, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word ‘bondmaid’ flutters to the floor. Esme rescues the slip and stashes it in an old wooden case that belongs to her friend, Lizzie, a young servant in the big house. Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men. They help her make sense of the world.

Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded. While she dedicates her life to the Oxford English Dictionary, secretly, she begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.

Set when the women’s suffrage movement was at its height and the Great War loomed, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. It’s a delightful, lyrical and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words, and the power of language to shape the world and our experience of it.

I am ready to start this Andy!!

Great! I am in the middle on two other books though! Sorry!
I can start over the weekend, and see how I get on, but it is also a very busy weekend, so I might not have made much progress before Monday. I plan to get the first update on Monday, is it ok? :)

I promise to start the next one (Little Thieves on 1st of February) on time! :)

If you want to go ahead and read more, I will respond to your comments when I catch up!

I can do monday Andy, no rush! I have a few books to get through as well so I might just do those first!

Great, thank you! So sorry!!!

just got this from the library so i will be able to start around the same time.

Great! I'll definitely start tomorrow! :)

Started! :) it's sweet... :)

I finally got to this one last year. I loved this book about the power of words.

I won't add spoilers but my review is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Page 83: (view spoiler)[Poor Esme! I wonder how bad things were at school... I don't think I want to know... It is so sad seeing her loose all her joy for learning!
Her friendship with Lizzie was very sweet.

I hope this doesn't turn out a sad book! (hide spoiler)]

Part 1: (view spoiler)[This is certainly quite a unique book and something I have never read before so I am enjoying this so far. I do feel like it's moving a bit slowly atm. Lizzie seems like a good character so far and I am interested to see what becomes of her. Aunt Dottie is interesting as well and seems like the lives of these three women could be the main focus of the book! (hide spoiler)]

Kira wrote: "Part 1: [spoilers removed]"

I am not sure it will move any faster later... But I am enjoying the quaint feeling of it... :)

Part 2: (view spoiler)[It is good to see Esme getting back to her old self! :) (hide spoiler)]

Part 2: (view spoiler)[It looks like something very horrible happened to Esme at the school and I can understand her resentment towards everyone for sending her there in the first place. I am glad to see that she shares a strong connection with Lizzie still and she atleast doesn't has to go back to the hell now. She is also progressing in the Scriptorium which makes me quite happy for her. (hide spoiler)]

Andy wrote: "Kira wrote: "Part 1: [spoilers removed]"

I am not sure it will move any faster later... But I am enjoying the quaint feeling of it... :)

Part 2: [spoilers removed]"

Yes, it has been really great! But it is taking me a lot of patience to read this book since most of my reads are usually fast paced lol!

Ah! If it helps some things start happening in Part 3, but I would still call it slow paced! ;)

I will read part 3 once I finish BOTM, hopefully this will gather more of my interest then!

Page 189: (view spoiler)[The narrative of the poor woman who has sex but didn't realise it could lead to pregnancy really irks me (and she is not a little girl anymore).
Esme is supposed to be smart, she is supposed to like learning, she was learning words about that, and she didn't look it up? Come on!

Really really stupid.

And I am not against abortion or anything, but the lack of taking responsibility and facing the consequence irks me too. It just annoys me terribly. Sorry. Everyone treats like it is some tragedy that befell her out of nowhere... Sure she doesn't want to be ruined. Could have thought of that beforehand, she is not a little girl anymore, but ok. Now is the time to admit to herself that she made a mistake, though. She can do whatever she wants after that, but at least learn from it.

Sorry for the rant...
(hide spoiler)]

End of part 3: (view spoiler)[Ok, this was sad, and I do feel bad for Esme now...

Though the comments of "Oh, they wanted me to give the baby away, what a novel thought" were still annoying. (hide spoiler)]

Part 3: (view spoiler)[I agree with you Andy abour Esme not knowing that she could get pregnant sounded stupid for such an intelligent woman. She's always looking up words and knows a plenty of obscure ones as well but somehow she didn't know this sounded improbable. I understand why she had to give the baby away, the scandal it could have caused during the time period and I liked that Ditte didn't reprimand her or anything but rather helped her in every way she could (hide spoiler)]

Part 4: (view spoiler)[Esme getting depressed after giving away her daughter was awful honestly, she lost all her glow. I don't know how efficient taking a walk is now in order to cure depression but I am glad it worked for her and she was pulled back into the world of lost words once again. Mabel's passing made me sad. It was great that Esme realised that the words she was collecting cannot and should not be kept hidden forever. I sense something might happen with Gareth in the coming future, I like the two of them together. Tilda and the women's suffrage movement interest me but tbh not enough to really be able to love this book. These are all such heavy topics and ones I am not educated enough about to be able to judge them. When Tilda tells her that Bill was now a dad, I liked that she wished she could have loved him just to be able to keep her daughter instead of feeling regretful, Grief has struck Esme once more with her father's death and I am curious to see what the future has in store for her. (hide spoiler)]

Im so glad it’s not just me! The beginning is dragging. Im glad to hear it picks up.

Kira wrote: "Part 4: [spoilers removed]"

Part 4: (view spoiler)[In principle I like the focus on Esme's personal growth, but this book feels a bit boring to me... Esme is not such a great protagonist to follow (just personal opinion obviously).
I am not super invested in the phylosophical debate of suffragettes vs suffragists, and I don't know enoughof the political landscape of the time to have an opinion one way or the other... I could compare this to Babel, that did a better job at raising my interest in the political debate. Here is seen from a distance.
It feels like a very English novel, so it is surprising to me that it was written so recently. It thinks and feels older, and a bit outdated...

Might be just me! :P I have read similar booms before. I guess I need to be more attached to the protagonist to enjoy these kind of books more... (hide spoiler)]

Kim wrote: "Im so glad it’s not just me! The beginning is dragging. Im glad to hear it picks up."

I think it picked up in part 3 and then becomes a bit boring again... Personal opinion! ;)

Part 5: (view spoiler)[I knew Gareth would die.. :(
Seriously, the end is way too full of death... (hide spoiler)]

Finished: I resent this book a little for making me cry... :P

Sorry for the delay!

Finished: (view spoiler)[I agree, the end was way too sad and honestly I am feeling really down having read this book. There was no respite for Esme at all and it was all a little too depressing for me. (hide spoiler)]

Kira wrote: "Sorry for the delay!

Finished: [spoilers removed]"

I agree! :(

Kira wrote: "Part 1: [spoilers removed]"

I've read up to part one! It's nice to read your comments although we're not technically reading together lol.

(view spoiler)[ Yeah, it's pretty slow so far, but... pleasant enough I guess. (wow, that's damning with faint praise!). I feel like it hasn't really got going yet so I'm looking forward to a bit more... something. Esme is sweet - I bet she's going to hate the school up in Scotland... (hide spoiler)]

Ellen-Arwen wrote: "Kira wrote: "Part 1: [spoilers removed]"

I've read up to part one! It's nice to read your comments although we're not technically reading together lol.

[spoilers removed]"

Ahah, you are prescient! :P

My loan expires 😫

Kim wrote: "My loan expires 😫"

Sorry to hear that!!!

Kim wrote: "My loan expires 😫"

Oh no - can't you extend it? I'm making fairly slow progress with this one. I was actually given a physical arc before it came out but I had so many ARCs at the time that it slipped through the cracks and it's taken me until now to read it... that's pretty bad, isn't it?

So many books, it gets so hard to choose. Then you find a series and you have to keep going…sigh. Being a reader comes with its challenges hehe.

Kira wrote: "Part 3: [spoilers removed]"

Omg, I have FINALLY finished part three. This book is taking me forever to read - the pacing is all off, and I was getting pretty bored tbh. (view spoiler)[ It got more interesting with Tilda and women's suffrage and I was like, 'FINALLY this book is going somewhere' - so I'm kind of disappointed that she's left. Hope she'll come back.

I agree with you both, Kira and Andy, that it seems pretty stupid she didn't realise she was pregnant, but she is actually pretty naive in 'wordly ways' so I guess it made sense. I love how non-judgemental Ditte was and I think her mixed emotions about giving the baby up were done well.

I just hope it doesn't take me as long to read the next section - hoping it will keep up the pace now! It's annoying, because the premise is a good one I think. (hide spoiler)]

Ellen-Arwen wrote: "Kira wrote: "Part 3: [spoilers removed]"

Omg, I have FINALLY finished part three. This book is taking me forever to read - the pacing is all off, and I was getting pretty bored tbh. It got more i..."

I think the pace was better after part 3 (but still slow)... I think that level of naivite was too much for the character we were given... But maybe it was just that I could not relate to someone so naive and hair-brained, while I felt a connection with the character earlier in the book.

Just got it back from the library (couldn’t renew but magically available again a week later). Not mad, glad to get back in it!

Andy wrote: "Ellen-Arwen wrote: "Kira wrote: "Part 3: [spoilers removed]"

Omg, I have FINALLY finished part three. This book is taking me forever to read - the pacing is all off, and I was getting pretty bored..."

Okay, I have FINALLY finished the book. Jeeeeez, that took me so long! I agree that the pacing got a bit better after part three, but only a bit to be honest. I loved the premise, there were some beautiful moments, great and relatable characters but it was really let down by pacing. I'm so frustrated because I feel this book had so much more potential to be better!

Will respond to individual sections now :) Thanks for buddying with me - it kept me going. And I hope you find it easier than me Kim!

Kira wrote: "Part 4: [spoilers removed]"

Part 4 (view spoiler)[

I agree - Esme's depression was awful, but very well done. It was a pretty sad section overall - much more than just 'getting the morbs.' I really enjoyed Esme's realisation of how important her lost words were - felt like some momentum.

I'm in two minds about the Tilda and the suffrage movement. After reading the author's note at the end, I can see why she needed to include it - it's just so relevant to the whole project - but I either wanted more of it, or for it be just a background thing. It was kind of floating in the middle - not important, not unimportant - and that didn't really work.

It felt so odd for Bill to be brought up, just casually mentioning that he's now a dad. My heart broke a little bit more. (hide spoiler)]

Andy wrote: "Kira wrote: "Part 4: [spoilers removed]"

Part 4: In principle I like the focus on Esme's personal growth, but this book feels a bit boring to me... Esme is not such a great protagonist to follow (..."

(view spoiler)[ Yeah - but you said it not me! Boredom was the main issue with this book... I haven't read Babel yet but I'm hoping to read it as the BotM this month (which would be good as I am SO behind on everything, partly the fault of this book). I find the suffragette vs suffragist distinction really interesting; we only learn so much in school. I'm looking forward to Babel more now! (hide spoiler)]

Random question: when did women get the vote in the US and under what circumstances? Sorry, I'm horribly uneducated :(

Kira wrote: "Sorry for the delay!

Finished: [spoilers removed]"

FINISHED (woohoo) (view spoiler)[

Oh yeah, Gareth was a goner from the first time was saw him tbh, before he was a proper character. It was the description of his eyes...

I know this book had a lot of death - but I wasn't really emotionally attached enough to feel sad, which makes me regretful. I so wanted this to be more than it was...

One thing I really liked was her work on esperanto with Bertie in hospital. I thought that her use of words was beautiful and beautiful partly because she didn't understand how very powerful they were.

Wasn't sure about the ending - I could've done with leaving her daughter in Australia and not 'meeting' her. It tied everything up - but maybe a bit too neatly? (hide spoiler)]

Ellen-Arwen wrote: "Random question: when did women get the vote in the US and under what circumstances?"

Ah, who knows! I only remember that they got it in 1946 in Italy, because it was after the war and their first vote was on the monarchy referendum (the Italian monarchy was a joke, so they got a resounding "No monarchy"). I only have a vague idea that women were voting in the UK much earlier than that from the movies, but I STILL don't know when (that will be probably part of the curriculum for the citizenship exam, whenever I finally decide to take it...)

Ellen-Arwen wrote: "Kira wrote: "Sorry for the delay!

Finished: [spoilers removed]"

FINISHED (woohoo) .."


(view spoiler)[Ahahah!Ylu made me laugh! Yes, Gareth was definitely a goner from the start - I mean, she even said she was thinking that during the wedding, come on!

I definitely agree that the Australian child part tied things up too neatly, and I did not like it much, because it follows the idea that "interests are in your genes" which is totally bokers.

I also scoffed a bit to the Esperanto bit (I am a paycholinguist). I don't know if it was really used in rehabilitation, but there is no reason why it should work any better than any random foreign language. The idea behind esperanto was to create an international language that could function as a lingua franca and would be easy to learn, but I bet that the only people it would be easy to learn would be those speaking indoeuropean languages (i.e.
European and north americans, and maybe some of the middle easterns or Indians, but just by chance). It never really took off because of obvious languages political power, but also because there is no such thing as 'simple and universal' in language.
I bet that if it did work in rehabilitation it was because it was a mode of communication that was not linked to the previous experiences of the soldiers, but linked to English via roots (e.g. latin roots or Norse) in some way, so something like Spanish or Greek or maybe even Norwegian would probably have worked just as well (maybe not French or German, as those languages would have been linked to the war, and soldier might have heard them in that context).
Sorry, I am jaded! :P (hide spoiler)]

Well done for finishing the book! It was a slog!

Andy wrote: "Well done for finishing the book! It was a slog!"

Ha, thanks. Just disappointed...