Hello dear readers!
It is Friday. And we’re on the last stretch of the 30DBC. For today’s challenge I really took a long time to think about this.
Honestly, I would recommend almost every book I mentioned as something you should read. People should read Fight Club and The Fault in Our Stars and The Lovely Bones and Good Morning, Midnight. You should spend Halloween reading Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Wieland; Le Dame Aux Camelias when you fall in love, and The Butcher’s Wife when you have a break-up; and Simon’s Cat and The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy when you’re taking a dump … Too much information?
If anything, I would wish that more people read. And usually I recommend to people the book I last read.
But, I thought about it, and if there was any book that I wish more people read – or consulted is …
A dictionary – or a thesaurus
Yes, I decided to go for sass today – but really, if there was any book I would give a person, especially the younger generation, it would be a dictionary (which does not include the word ‘selfie’ in it).
I wish more people perused a dictionary every now and then. I wish more people expanded their vocabulary, I wish people knew the definition of words before using them, and I wish that people just used the whole spectrum of the English language to its full-effect. ‘Cause not using those beautiful words is just a crime.
And I quote
“So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys – to woo women – and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays.”
― N.H. Kleinbaum, Dead Poets Society
I wish more people knew the difference between a noun, verb and adjective – and pronoun and article and adverb.
This also goes for people who write books as well. I wish there was a minimum number of times you can describe the grass as green and the sky as blue.
I prefer authors who spend more time describing a feeling than what article of clothing their character wears. I wish authors paid attention to the specifics. I wish more people spent time looking through a dictionary.
One of my favourite websites is etymonline.com. I use it all the time for poetry and for writing my scholarly essays. I love the semantic links in words. I wish more people explored them.
I wish they would appreciate the beauty of how, to define a word, you need to connect it to more words. You can define something with another word – which has its own definition. And that definition contains more words – and the cycle continues.
The dictionary is ultimately a maze of words upon words upon words of things that need to be defined and can only be defined by a set of words we assume others already know.
The dictionary is the very first ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’, as you navigate your way through its alphabetically-ordered pages.
So, I suggest, if you ever wanted to know the meaning of life – look for it in a dictionary.
And for more books that people should read, check out my partner-in-crime’s blog Rhey of Sunshine. Oh, and also, please go over to her blog and tell her “Get Well Soon” cause she’s been feeling sick lately!
Till next time,
cumuloq ❤
Cumuloquoise Blog 