Vocabulary

I love words. Reading a well written book is like feeding the soul! Most people can scratch down some thoughts on a page and make their point known but a good author is like an artist. There is so much more beyond the simplicity of sentences, paragraphs and chapters. You can feel the great enthusiasm, joy and love beaming through and author's choice words.

I always have at least 5 books that I'm in the middle of at any given time. I just started reading April 1865: The Month That Saved America, by Jay Winik, ...which seems rather appropriate since today is the first of April.
Exactly 148 years later.

Starting a book is usually the chore. You don't really know where you're headed, you're trying to get a grasp for the style and flow, and you have that little voice in the back of your head telling you that there are 500 things that your time would be better spent on.
The author knows that it is essential to hook the reader right away. To get the reader to see a vivid and animated picture with mere words is a weighty task, but imagery is the key. Once pictures are created and you're set on a journey all other cares, tasks and duties fall away. Your attention is then undivided. Jay Winik had me hooked by the 7th sentence, "Across the slim divide of the battered landscape lay Grant's swelling Army of the Potomac." The seeming contradiction of "slim" and "swelling" aroused an immediate image in my mind: A narrow strip of land overflowing with more soldiers than the prescribed span of earth could fit. The temptation was too much. I had read on!
Oh yes! The ability to lose oneself in a book brings insurmountable pleasure.

In the introduction alone I was overjoyed to find 13 words that I'd either never heard of before and/or didn't understand. I suppose some people would find a book with too many big words a wearisome read, but it excites me. Big words, once you understand them, usually broaden your ability to understand, explain and describe life and the world around you.
Here are the words I found:
-enervated
-protracted
-burnished
-magnanimity
-poignant
-premonition
-subjugate
-dénouement
-axiomatic
-capitualtion
-autocratic
-concatenation
-formidable

Once I looked up the words in the dictionary I was delighted to find deep meanings. There is a time and place to use common, easily understood words... but sometimes it takes 10 or more common words to explain the same things that one big word can relay.

Someday, after the world is through with their overabundant use of abbreviations and acronyms (often used in texting and online sites like facebook), people will be hungry for a good plateful of words.
Coming soon to your neighborhood? ...the expansion of vocabulary.