For the last seven years of so I’ve been a huge fan of the Snob dictionary books (film, rock music, food, wine) that David Kamp and collaborators have written. There’s a new one excerpted in the current Vanity Fair called “The TV Snob’s Dictionary.” A tip of the hat to Zohar Lazar‘s illustrations.

Like the previous Snob books, the latest is exquisitely written. Every sentence is a Hope diamond, chiseled and honed and phrased to perfection with just the right seasoning of know-it-all attitude.

My favorite passage from the Film Snob Dictionary: “The Film Snob’s stance is one of proprietary knowingness — the pleasure he takes in movies derives not only from the sensory experience of watching them, but also from knowing more about them than you do, and from zealously guarding this knowledge. The Film Snob fairly revels, in fact, in the notion that The Public Is Stupid and Ineducable, which is what sets him apart from the more benevolent Film Buff — the effervescent, Scorsese-style enthusiast who delights in introducing novitiates to The Bicycle Thief and Powell-Pressburger films.”