Quote:
Originally Posted by Jovvi
Well I think some people just love words, they like to discuss meanings and interpretations, I do, too, sometimes (Swedish words with my friends), but when reading a literary text, I usually prefer not having to look too many words up in the dictionary (occasional words are fine) because doing that distracts me from the story and for me the story is the most important thing about books.
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Whereas for me, looking up words is like savoring the nuances of a presentation of perfectly confected truffles, or the variations between vivid-colored wings in a lepidopterist's display. I even love the vocabulary of difficult poetry, which can taste like a dense chocolate cake with seemingly infinite layers of different fillings or, alternately, fill the eye like a mixture of nacreous coprolite and glittering adamantine stones.
When a fiction writer employs a rich vocabulary, I revel in it. The only time I don't like it is when a writer uses an odd word to impress you and then stands there pointing at it (David Foster Wallace, I'm gazing at your well-intentioned ghost).