On the pages of a new memoir called "Poker Face," a well-known local radio personality comes across as, well, more than a little unusual.

He enjoys sitting under a sun lamp in his New Hampshire den until his face grows "as shriveled as a raisin." Once, with no one the wiser, he recites gibberish during a public reading of the Torah because the lighting is too dim to read his notes. He teaches his daughter how to play bridge at the tender age of 9, calls himself "Conan the Grammarian" or "Attila the Pun," and -- with the help of an aspiring actress he met over cards in graduate school -- produces two of the top poker players in the world. Through it all, he's "stiff but magnanimous."

You might think the subject of all this reminiscing in print would be busy writing someone out of his will. But Richard Lederer, public radio star and renowned language maven, is a huge fan of the book's author, his daughter.

"I'm just real proud," said the happy papa, who appeared on KPBS-FM on Monday to talk about "Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers" before heading to her daughter's book signing that evening in Mission Valley.

It's a good thing he's happy with "Poker Face." The slim and readable book by 31-year-old Katy Lederer is getting national attention and may turn into a best seller, exposing the eccentric and hugely successful Lederer family to untold fame.

Richard Lederer, as any KPBS-FM listener knows, co-hosts a weekly talk show called "A Way With Words" with fellow linguist Charles Harrington Elster.

Armed with groan-worthy puns and a bevy of opinions, the two hosts engage in wordplay and examine the intricacy of the English language. The show, adored by its admirers and ridiculed by its detractors, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this summer.

Before his incarnation as a well-known author and word guru, the 65-year-old Lederer worked in semiobscurity as an English teacher at an ultraelite boarding school in New Hampshire. In the book, Katy Lederer describes growing up in a family obsessed with games but unable to connect emotionally when they weren't sitting around the kitchen table playing hearts.

In the tradition of best-selling memoirs about dysfunctional families (think "The Liar's Club" and "Running With Scissors"), "Poker Face" seems to hold back nothing about the foibles of various family members. Readers learn about everything from one person's drug use and multiple arrests to an autistic cousin's insistent obsession with checkers to the state of a new mother's nipples.

In some of the most wrenching passages, Katy Lederer writes about her mother's excruciating descent into alcoholism. (Richard Lederer later divorced his wife -- who recovered well enough to appear on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" -- and is now married to a Dutch woman he met -- no joke -- at a Mensa meeting.)

The book "captures the family currents nicely, especially her mother," the elder Lederer said from his home in Scripps Ranch. As for him: "In the book you see me, warts and all."

He's a little miffed that his daughter didn't write about all the good things, like his reading to her every night, and he admits arguing a few times with her as she wrote the book.

"I would just say, 'What about this and that nice moment, why isn't that in?'

"Obviously, I think I come across as a bit dorky, but that is her memory, and she does a great job creating this interesting family, this word-happy, game-happy family."

The book also focuses heavily on Katy Lederer's two siblings, Howard and Annie, who end up joining the world poker circuit and making a bundle. Annie, in fact, made frequent appearances in the best-selling book "Positively Fifth Street," a true account of how a journalist writing about Vegas ends up a finalist in the Binion's World Series of Poker.

Annie and Howard continue to play poker, while Katy Lederer -- no slouch at gambling herself -- writes poetry and works for a trading firm in New York City.

As for Lederer, he doesn't have too much time to bask in his daughter's glory. He continues to make public appearances all over the county to promote appreciation for words, and later this year, he'll release two more books: "A Man of My Words: Reflections on the English Language" and "The Cunning Linguist: Ribald Riddles, Lascivious Limericks, Carnal Corn, and Other Good, Clean, Dirty Fun."

If you don't get the pun in the second book's title, don't expect me to explain it. Call up Lederer the next time the show is on, and ask him yourself. He is, after all, a teacher. And a "magnanimous" one to boot.

Randy Dotinga is afraid a memoir of his life would get filed in the horror section. E-mail him at NCTimesRadio@aol.com.