Rating: 
Summary: Top seller a top read
Review: Ye Gods, this must be a mistake. A best selling book that's worth reading? When I was told about The Surgeon of Crowthorne, I thought it must be some obscure little book hidden in the back of the literary section of the bookshop. Instead, there it was, right out the front. If thousands of people are reading this book (and since thousands of people have paid money for it, it seems reasonable to assume that they are) then there is hope for the world yet. Sure, the detail is a bit thin at times, and sure, there is a bit of slight of hand here and there in the telling of the story, but essentially this is a book about words, and as such it is a triumph just to get it in the hands of so many people. PS: The Big Books' first real 'English' word, aard-vark, is actually a Dutch word. The direct translation is 'earth pig'.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book, but sometimes off course...
Review: This is a truly fascinating book which would have held my interest even better had the author remained focused on the two (or perhaps three, counting the murder victim) characters. Instead, the reader is subjected to extended theorizing as to caused Dr. Minor's condition, how he might have been diagnosed/treated today, how that might have affected the OED, etc. It's pure hypothesis and I'm not sure the book was well served by the conjecture.Aside from this, a major section of the book focused on the history of dictionaries, how the OED was compiled, and the like. Fascinating stuff, perhaps, but if a reader is not particularly interested in the history of dictionaries, it's a bit tedious. Still, a good read overall.
Rating:
Summary: A Professor's Joy
Review: Admittedly, I'd rate the book a bit lower for personal, literary pleasure--it doesn't provide penetrating character studies or provocative philosophical questions about the nature of language and semantics. But the book succeeded in doing the impossible--injecting life, energy, and enthusiasm into my (required) linguistics course. My students suddenly became interested in the OED and the history of words at the same time they were seduced into traveling from brothels and prisons in Victorian England to America's Civil War battlefields to questions of human psychopathology and brilliance. The author has taken someone prosaic bits and pieces of history and created an impressive imaginative edifice, call it what you will--docu-novel, new journalism, creative history. It combines scholarly attention to quotations from the OED with a somewhat melodramatic, sensationalist style in a felicitous synthesis that is engaging but never insulting.
Rating:
Summary: Who would ever have thought that this would be interesting?
Review: How is a dictionary made? Boring topic, right? A resounding WRONG--Mr. Winchester spins the tale and examines the narrow ledge between sanity and madness at the same time. Several other amateur reviewers here dislike the author's style but I had no problems with his writing and certainly his research was well done. A great topic, quick and easily read.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Sometimes in a writer's life he is drawn by a footnote character. He wants to know more, he wants to tell the story of some forgotten soul who was outstanding in some way. Unfortunately, there is rarely adequate information available about this person to create a definitive volume. Simon Winchester has apparently suffered from a terrible lack of information about the character who compelled him to create this book, William Minor. The book begins with a dramatic story of the first meeting between the institutionalized Dr. William Minor and the first editor of the Oxford English Dictonary, James Murray. Unfortunately, we learn much later in the book that this opening note was a lie, a fiction used to sell magazines in the late part of the 19th century, and now misused to draw the reader into this book. It's an offensive trick, and even worse, Winchester's flair for melodrama only begins with this abuse, which made me uncertain as to whether I was supposed to regard this book as fact or fiction. He describes scenes which took place more than a century ago without giving any evidence as to where his information about such details came from. Additionally, Winchester seems to love to use obscure words and bizarre sentence construction, giving the book a stilted feel. I found the subject of this book fascinating, but sadly underdeveloped. The author waits until the end of the book to translate Minor's madness into a modern-day diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. One of the things I found most annoying, aside from his heavy-handed melodrama, was his tendency to describe photographs. There are no photographs in this book, and even the one on the cover is under-credited. Toward the end of the book he describes a photo of Dr. Minor which may or may not be the one on the cover. We don't know. He also describes in detail the booklets that Minor created for keeping track of words and quotes. A reproduction of one or two of these, along with some of the photos he describes, would have been very interesting. For me, the most enjoyable part of the book was the "coda," the author's endnote about his own interest in the subject and how it affected his life. The book would probably have been much more enjoyable if it all had been written to be perceived through this lens, rather than what I think the author attempted (but failed) to do, which was to show us Minor, and Murray through the lens of their own time. This book is worth reading, especially if you love words and dictionaries and the history of the English language, but don't expect to find much insight into the souls of Murray or Minor, this book asks more of those types of questions than it can answer.
Rating:
Summary: The Bomb!
Review: Read about W.C. Minor, the nutty guy of "immense erudition," and you will not be let down. I mean, he thinks he is "being taken in flying machines" to cavort with "cheap women" in Turkish brothels. Now THAT is funny. Morbid amusement aside, I was also touched by the story. Sure, it wasn't very emotionally written, but I don't think it was supposed to be much of a tear-jerker. It naturally lent itself to involvement: an exceptionally gifted (and useful) man with a terrible illness contributes to the greatest work of lexicography of all time. The chapter with the penectomy was painful to read. I read this book in several hours -- that's how well it flowed. It's an interesting and very informative book, although in a slightly 'dusty academic' style. Maybe it doesn't tell one as much as it could about the actual compiling of the OED, but then, to its credit, it is a FUN book! Read it!
Rating:
Summary: A Failed Story
Review: The basic story here is good, but I found the writing contrived, opinionated, and in the end, boring. While I enjoyed learning the basic information presented about the OED, and Victorian mental health care, I will never again read anything written by this author.
Rating:
Summary: The Surgeon of Crowthorne
Review: Mind-blowing. If you love dictionaries then this book is an absolute must. Simon Winchester treats the subject of William Minor's insanity with respect and his brilliance during his lucidity is breathtaking. James Murray comes through as the perfect editor of the OED who over a period of time befriends Minor. This book will leave you wanting much more than Winchester has been able to deliver.
Rating:
Summary: An Intriguing Story, Disasterously Executed
Review: Simon Winchester was given the opportunity of a life time with this book. The topic is both historicaly and fictionaly intriguing. I was drawn in immediately by the topic, but as I soon as I passed the first 10 pages, I was sorely disappointed. I found the book to be very poorly constructed, often going off on long rambling tangents for which the story only needed a sentence or two explanation. These tangents and added pages withdrew from the plot itself as even the most climactic moments were about as exciting as his explanation and derivation of schizophrania. Mr. Winchester was also very fond of adding his own views of Victorian and contemporary society and he did not hesitate to incorporate them into the plot. The end of the book was especially filled with such opinions, as Mr. Winchester began diagnosing Dr. Minor. There is no doubt that Mr. Winchester had done extensive research and employed his unending interest in the topic, but it read like a research paper in which the author assembled hundreds of notecards and tried to paste them all together, careful not to loose a single piece of information, relevant or irrelevant. The book was a mighty and interesting task and the story itself fascinated me, but I found it to be poorly executed.
Rating:
Summary: Not quite Novel
Review: Winchester's tome covers well trodden ground in a meticulous fashion. Its appeal to both American and English bookbuyers is granted but unfortunately it does not deliver on its strongly implied promises of mystery and intrigue. As a concisely constructed recounting and correction of facts about Dr Minor's contribution to the Oxford Dictionary it is very interesting but could have taken but a few pages in a magazine such as 'Vanity Fair' (not quite a novel's worth of reading !).The author's liking of repetition in his prose is also offputting rather than tension building. Bill Bryson's tome on the history of the English language covers much broader fields more lucidly and without the pretence for those interested in the history of our language.
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