Reading Material for an enhanced vocabulary

After 4 decades of television, videos games, music and movies I find myself incredibly bored.

I never chatted with others much and so I have a very limited vocabulary.

Is there any reading material out there that uses less common words?

I’m tired of looking in the dictionaries when i’m Trying to understand others

Try reading medical research articles. It will definitely challenge your mind and you will learn quickly to look up a lot of words to find their meaning in the context they are using them in. I actually do not have to look up the meaning of nearly as many words as I used to. Often a scientific word has more than one meaning based on what it is being applied to, just like many words do in our language.

a reply to: CloseEncountersGuy
H.P. Lovecraft.

Gibbous moons and all.

a reply to: CloseEncountersGuy

Charles Bukowski.

Start with easy reading like detective novels and science fiction and as your vocabulary increases move on to history, current events, philosophy and then the great authors. Try Mark Twain, Dostoevsky, and the New York Times.
a reply to: CloseEncountersGuy

a reply to: CloseEncountersGuy

Sir Roger Penrose.

Can you handle that?

originally posted by: BrawlPups
Start with easy reading like detective novels and science fiction and as your vocabulary increases move on to history, current events, philosophy and then the great authors. Try Mark Twain, Dostoevsky, and the New York Times.
a reply to: CloseEncountersGuy

I think this is your best advice ^^^

I recommend anything by Kurt Vonnegut.

...or Webster. He writes a big book that contains EVERY word. It is even alphabetized for easy searching...

I really enjoy Brandon Sanderson's books. Simple writing that still stirs the imagination. Also read on a tablet/phone so then you can just click the word and instantly get the definition.

a reply to: CloseEncountersGuy
You could try novels written by the more classic authors. I am currently in the middle of the Gormenghast trilogy, by Mervyn Peake.
The older historians. Edward Gibbon would really stretch you.
I haven't seen Readers' Digest lately, if it still exists, but there used to be a regular feature called "It pays to enhance your word power".

a reply to: CloseEncountersGuy

Read a lot. Use the dictionary a lot. No easy way.

a reply to: CloseEncountersGuy

Anything and everything.

Just read, read, read.

You will find words you've never come across before in the strangest of places, and the more you read how different authors put words together - they all have very different styles - you will also find that your ability to construct sentences will also just kind of improve to.

And the best part is that you don't have necessarily read the great works of literature for this. You can read just about anything in print. Just make sure you are reading obsessively from a variety of sources and a variety of genre. Yes, the great works are good to dive into from time to time so you can see real masters did it, but you can still pull some obscure vocabulary out of pulp novels too.

a reply to: CloseEncountersGuy

RE: Reading Material for an enhanced vocabulary


ATS

a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

I was so hungry to read when I was a kid, that when I was getting my hair permed at the beauty parlor, I would read the ingredient labels on the backs of the product bottles on the wall. It may not have enhanced my vocabulary, but it did enhance my reading skills.

a reply to: ketsuko

That's what I always did on the crapper, as kid.

When I finally had my very own bathroom a whole library of books and exotic catalogs stacked 2' tall in there all the time.

a reply to: CloseEncountersGuy
Read Asimov's foundation trilogy.