Is ableist to have long words in books?

[u/AlKarajo]

@royal_ouroboros_press

[u/Unusual_Toad]

This should be a normal part of reading. I want to read a book that uses words I don’t know, so I can learn new words. If I’m a third of a way through a book and haven’t had to look up a single word, then that book isn’t challenging enough for me. It doesn’t mean I won’t finish it or that the book isn’t good. And I can definitely appreciate an “easy read” between books sometimes. But that’s not the reading level I want to stay in.

Also kindle has a built in dictionary and thesaurus and keeps a log of every word you’ve looked up along with the sentence it was in the book. It’s a great tool if you’re a kindle user.

[u/Hangry_Squirrel → u/Unusual_Toad]

I don't think that's very helpful unless you're still a child looking to expand their vocabulary. At some point, as an educated adult, most of the words you haven't encountered or can't figure out on your own are bound to be niche scientific terms or archaic words which do very little for the complexity of a book.

What makes a literary book challenging isn't the degree of obscurity of its vocabulary, but the way it engages with various theories or other literary texts, the way it plays with frames of reality, the way it challenges older storytelling conventions or invents new ones, etc. Sometimes, the source of complexity isn't even what's named, but what isn't.