I Love Words

Everything about them. How they can be placed into a basic sentence to serve your immediate communication need or how they can be spun into a tale that completely absorbs your very existence and requires you to awake from a dream when you are finished reading.

Years ago, I picked up a book in Heathrow airport. I cannot survive a flight without having enough reading material to leave no possibility that I will run out. I think I actually grabbed three off the 'buy two, get one' table. This specific book was by an Irish author and told the story of a carpenter who had become deaf as a child in a bombing by the IRA. It didn't fixate on the bombing, but was a novel of his life as an adult. I can't remember the plot beyond what I just told you, but what sticks in my mind is the artistry of the prose. I was mesmerized. Completely taken in by the words, how they formed together and flowed from one to the other was a thing of beauty. I loaned the book to my mother when she was recovering from a surgery and she cannot now find it. I long for that book. She assumes it is somewhere in her house still. All of her books were packed into boxes during a remodeling project and have not yet come back out. So someday we may be reunited. Maybe. Until then, it lives in my memory like a lost love. I do hope that the metaphor stops there and doesn't include it coming back into my life sporting long-forgotten terrible habits and a beer belly (or the literary equivalent - choppy sentences and often repeated dull words).

Here are a few ways to learn more words for yourself. (So when you talk to me, I will swoon.)

Save the Words - just heard about this the other day on NPR. You adopt a fading word and pledge to use it as often as possible. Haven't picked my word yet, but had to close the window while writing this because the little voices were kind of freaking me out.
Free Rice - terribly addictive game, designed by a father to help his son on a standardized vocab test. You just choose the word that means the same as the word you are given (the synonym - but you knew that word right?) and for each time you play, rice is donated to feed the hungry. As you advance levels, the words get harder. I popped on to make sure I got the link right and I am up to level 36. The words are getting rather difficult. Or should I say formidable?
Thesaurus.com - really I don't know half the words you think I know. Or rather, I know them but cannot always recall the perfect one at the moment that it is needed. So I cheat. Or I am quite ingenious. You pick. I just know that I hate to read something that uses the same old word over and over and over.

Now your task is to pick a word and start using it. Or play a round of free rice. And let me know what you picked or how you did. It will be music to my ears.

And if anyone ever finds out what the title of that book is, you will be my literary hero!