Word choice

I was thinking about why I like Anne McCaffrey's writing so much while I was reading The Masterharper of Pern this afternoon.  In this book, McCaffrey uses more sentence fragments, mainly to show the thought patterns of her characters.  (I do prefer her books that minimize the fragments.)  However, it's her word choice and realistic dialog that I really enjoy.   As I read, I keep coming across wonderful words like crepuscular (pertaining to twilight) used in a way that is natural and effective.   So many of the words that most commonly appear on the GRE exam are in her books, but the books are still easy to read.  This reinforces what I keep telling my students -- SAT and GRE words are used in every day writing!  

The two authors who I think write the most beautiful sentences are Pat Conroy and Hampton Sides.  In Ghost Soldiers, Sides describes the landscape as Army Rangers crawl across the fields toward the prisoner of war camp in Cabanatuan.   The book is a war story, but the language in that section made me just sit and admire the beauty of his writing.  Much as Shakespeare's tragedies benefit from the comic relief scenes, the sentence structure and word choice that Sides employs eases the harsh reality of what happened while concurrently making it more vivid.  I don't think I could have finished the book were it written in harsher sentences.  Conroy can likewise ease me through reading an emotionally challenging chapter with his incredible sentences.   

Then there are my students -- sometimes they write the most beautiful sentences of all!   Some of them write essays that are so good I forget to grade them while I'm reading.   Sometimes, there is just one gem of a sentence in a sea of less polished writing.  Regardless, it's the sentences that make me just sit and savor them that make a stack of essays enjoyable.