Encyclopedia Knowledge

I love an encyclopedia or a dictionary. For me, they are not just something to refer to but something to read.

Before the days of Google and Wikipedia we had to look things up in books. My cousin and I got the two volume Children’s Encyclopedia as children – kept at her house but devoured by me when I was round there. We ended up with one volume each so we could only check facts in one half of the alphabet.

Then my mum subscribed to a part work called The World of Knowledge and each week I would memorise the pages before putting them in their binder. We bought the updated version for my son when he was growing up.

My shelves are full of reference books – most of which I have read from cover to cover. It took me a month each for the massive Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Encyclopedia of Fantasy. Other books cover words and slang; atlases of imaginary places; myths, mysteries and legends; the occult and conspiracies; and various genres of fiction.

I was reminded about my love of reference books because I’m reading Jess Nevins Dictionary of Snow Hill. Nevins is an expert on pulp literature who created the first two volumes of Crossovers (detailing literary characters meeting each other in books, TV and other media) and the massive Fantastic Victoriana. The Snow Hill book is not really a dictionary. It’s a novel posing as a reference book which is both pastiche and homage to the pulps of the 30s with lots of characters appearing under aliases, plus references to many other fictional people, in an imaginary city where heroes, villains and monsters battle it out during the depression.  There is an overarching plot which is revealed bit by bit in each entry (if you know it, keep it to yourself because I haven’t finished the book) and the introduction hints the denouement will be pretty spectacular and end the city’s golden age.

There have been other books with unusual structures – Pavic’s Dictionary of the Khazars and Perec’s Life springing to mind – with arguably more literary qualities – but as someone who loves pulps and reference books, I’m really enjoying it.