DICTIONARY OF ACCEPTED IDEAS: Flaubert's Devil's Dictionary, a mildly entertaining frivolity which displays a great deal of irreverence through the affectation of sycophancy. There's "[n]o need to have one single precise notion about it: thunder against." ( )

I'm not sure "accepted ideas" is really a decent translation of the title; "received ideas" is at least an existing idiom in English, and captures both the transmission and the passivity inherent in the kind of ideas Flaubert lampoons. Nevertheless, it's really nice to have the Dictionary in a separate, slim volume. It really is one of the most brilliant, funny, carefully-produced (if never completed) texts ever composed. Not just a masterclass in satire and intriguing document of nineteenth-century France, it's also hilarious and infinitely re-readable. ( )