August 2026 - The JK Vision - Geek, Film, Gaming & Foodie Blog

I was excited when I found out Dane Cobain was going to send me a copy of another one of his new books after I throughly enjoyed reading a reviewing his Subject Verb Object anthology of short stories. This time, however, Cobain delved into his maiden voyage of non-fiction writing in the form of The Lexicologist's Handbook.

The Lexicologist's Handbook is, as self-described, 'a dictionary of unsusal words'. Cobain wrote this over the coruse of 10 years where he would write down any curious and interesting words he thought of whilst going about his day to day business. These words have been collated into a book of pronunciaations, definitions and examples.

This book at first seems like a dictionary that you may only reference to as and when needed but the true entertainment in this book, to me, comes from the often comical examples Cobain chooses to further explain the words. Never before have I described a dictionary as a 'page-turner' but this truly did capture my attention for prolonged periods of time.

Through my experience of reading large exerts of this book I have discovered new meanings of words I was already familiar with as well as many words I had never heard of before. Cobain challenges the reader to take a new word from these pages and incorporate it into their everyday conversations. I have highlighted some of my favourite new words below (along with some that made me laugh).

Flapdoodle

Pronunciation: Flap-do-dull

Definition: Nonsense

Example: Dave thought that the poliotician's big speech was a load of old flapdoodle. He didn't believe a word he said.

Crampon

Pronunciation: Cram-pon

Definition: A plate of spikes that's fixed to a book to help the wearer to transverse difficult terrain like ice or rock.

Example: Sir Edmund Hillary asked santa for a new crampon for his next trip up the mountain.

Unbirthday

Pronunciation: Un-birth-day

Definition: Any day except one's birthday; a neologism coined by C.S. Lewis.

Example: I didn't want to make Joseph a cup of tea, but I felt like I had no choice when he told me it was his unbirthday.

I won't spoil any more for you but there are some real gems in these pages which I'll leave for you to find. If you pick yourself up a copy of this book, come back and tell me in the comment (or on Twitter) what your favourite words were.

I've decided to take on the challenge to incorporating some words into my everyday speech. With the upcoming UK election, I expect flapdoodle to become much more prevelant.

I can highly reccommend this book to any fan of the English language, lexcologists, or anyone who can read. You can pick up a copy here.

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I've been aware of the Hitchhiker series from a young age, from both snippets of the TV Series and discussing the show in my middle school English lessons. I'd never had any interest above that in either the series or the book (or the film as I have just discovered) until I saw this Reddit post. It gave me a little chuckle so I thought "Hey, I'm in my summer holidays from work, might as well do something useful" so I got myself a copy of 'The Complete Trilogy of 5' and started on the first book in the series.

The first thing I noticed was how little the book has aged. It doesn't seem dated and its ideas of what futuristic space travel may look like are the same ideas that you would expect from a modern-day space-opera. You don't find yourself laughing at what the author, Douglas Adams, thought the future of the universe may look like as it's very modernly written even though the novel was published in 1979.

“Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

This is the first book I have read that gave me a good few chuckles here and there. Douglas Adams portrays typical British humour through the novel in the form of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox. A third of whom are human with the other 2 being alien life-forms. Dent is whisked away from Earth by his close friend, Ford Prefect, who is aware of a plan to destroy Earth in favour of an inter-galactic bypass. The book follows the pair's hitchhiking through space upon escaping the ashes of where the planet earth once was, using Prefect's trusty copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

Source

I found myself reading this book for a chapter a night due to time constraints but it was the sort of novel that you could easily pick back up and know what was going on, in spite of a few unfavourable lengthy words here and there. It's a cheery take on an over-done plot in film; the destruction of Earth by alien life.

The ending of the book seemed a bit too abrupt for my liking but since the second novel was published the following year I'm not too fussed as it's sequel 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe' was published the year after the original novel so I'm sure it was meant to be immediately followed upon in the next instalment. I for one cannot wait to get onto the next book and bring you my thoughts yet again.

There are another four books in the series by Adams for me to read, plus a sixth published posthumously in 2006, so there's plenty more for me to get my teeth into now that I've finished the novel. I plan to slowly but surely work my way through the huge universe that Adams created, which all began from a 1978 BBC Radio 4 comedy show

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and look forward to venturing further into the series, perhaps having a go at watching the series, film and maybe even the original radio show.

Have you read this novel? What did you think?

Follow @MrAdrianJones

Flapdoodle

Crampon

Unbirthday

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