So here I am, minding my own business, reading a book about

[RockRaven]

the making of a dictionary, hard to be more milquetoast than that, and all of a sudden...

Between 1840 and 1880, half of the pornography produced contained flagellation and beating...

Excuse me, wut?

[NJCher]

1. Ewwwww

That is all.

[True Dough]

2. Don't leave us hanging!

What was the other half?

[IcyPeas]

3. A book about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary?

It is a really interesting book. They made a movie but unfortunately it starred Mel Gibson.

The Professor and the Madman

A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

[Lilaclady]

4. Fascinating book

It’s an interesting book, I didn’t watch the movie. If you like that book you may like The Measure of All Things by Ken Adler. It tells how two French astronomers set out in 1792 to measure the world and how the meter came to be.

[RockRaven]

5. It is about the OED, but not that one. It is called

The Dictionary People by Sarah Ogilvie, and was just published last year.

I have read The Professor and the Madman, though some years ago now, and recall enjoying it. I had not known it was adapted for film. As far as Simon Winchester goes, I really enjoyed A Crack in the Edge of the World (about the 1906 SF earthquake) and Krakatoa (about, well, Krakatoa, volcano go boom).

Both the professor (Murray) and the madman (Dr. Minor) are in The Dictionary People, to varying degrees. It tells the story of the making of the dictionary through anecdotes about the many "Readers" like Dr Minor, crowdsourcing volunteers who sent in slips of paper with quotations from whatever books they were reading which illustrated the usage of any given word.

I'm 2/3 of the way through it, so my opinion is fairly well set, absent a major change which seems unlikely. It is fine. Not bad, but not blowing my socks off either. If someone reads a lot and always needs new books, I'd recommend it. But to someone who only reads a couple of books per year, maybe not (would depend on why they read so little).