Thread: An Observation: The New Breed of Authors Are Using Obscure Words - Page After Page

Aloha!

I am a fairly well educated man with an advanced degree, and I am fairly well read. I consider myself to have a broad vocabulary. I have loved reading since I was a child. And I read often. These are not boasts, but background for a trend I have observed over the last 10 years or so in contemporary literature.

I have noticed that in the current books I am reading, many of the authors are using highly uncommon words, bordering on obscurity. It is not uncommon for me to have to look up words as I am reading to find their definition. I rarely if ever had to do this until fairly recently. Lately, I seem to have to look up definitions of words more often than not. Thank goodness for eReaders that let you do this with a touch on the screen. If I had to do this the old fashioned way with a dictionary, I'd probably have given up on a few contemporary books that I have read in the last 10 years.

One of the largest offenders of this observation is the author Jon Krakauer and his book "Into The Wild", the tragic story of Chris McCandless. If you have not read the book, perhaps you have seen the movie. During this read, I was constantly looking up words to find their definition. It got to the point where I almost abandoned the book. It went from irritating to ridiculous. I remember at one point I was actually looking up a word or two on every single page. At that point, reading ceases to become pleasurable for me and migrates toward becoming a chore.

It seems to me that at least some of the new breed of authors are either trying to impress by using obscure words, or they are just master wordsmiths to the point that your average reader is going to be frustrated by the high use of uncommon vocabulary. Truly. I would wager that at least 95 percent of the English speaking population would not know most of the words I have had to investigate over the last 10 years. I am referring to words that simply never come up in conversation, nor do they in any of the literature I have read in the past, except for Old English. And the argument that having to look up these obscure words increases one's vocabulary does not hold water. Why? Because, you will most likely never read nor use words this rare ever again.

Santa brought me a few new books for Christmas on my eReader. "Robert Redford's" biography and "Apropos of Nothing" the Woody Allen autobiography. Both have had me busier than I expected with looking up the definition of words that I quite honestly did not know.

Oh well. Just an observation. Perhaps it's just my luck of the draw with authors. Others may not have noticed this trend at all.

Mahalo!

-Zip