<p>The best way I memorize vocab has always been through interesting novels that I love to re-read. Novels really emphasize the context of the words, so I was wondering if anyone can recommend any writers/short stories/novels that they've found challenging and chock-full of hard vocabulary words.</p>
<p>What grade are you in?</p>
<p>Ulysses is very hard -.- but in a unique way.
The scarlet letter is pretty easy to understand but i think its kinda boring… but it has some good vocab words.</p>
<p>I am currently ready Catch-22. It’s not very hard, but I’ve seen literally every word I’ve encountered on the SAT and more in it. It’s like chock full of them.</p>
<p>Heart of Darkness (Conrad) was tough - though that may have been the density of the book as much as the vocab.</p>
<p>Eleventh. I’ve read Catch-22 - it’ll probably be a good idea to re-scan it, though…</p>
<p>One Hundred Years of Solitude</p>
<p>epicly hard. but i like it a lot.</p>
<p>frankenstein was very easy to read, but i also learned a lot of vocab.</p>
<p>Well The Wealth of Nations was a difficult read, but I don’t think you’ll learn much helpful vocabulary from it, as it was written in almost 250 years ago. However, I still recommend it, just for the understanding it brings :)</p>
<p>Believe it or not, but a lot of the words from my last SAT were in Jane Austen books. Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, etc.</p>
<p>Whoa, I can imagine how epicly hard One Hundred Years of Solitude would be. My Spanish Lit teacher almost made us read it in the original Spanish. Thank God she didn’t!</p>
<p>Webster’s Dictionary</p>
<p>Charles Dickens is always a great go-to author for challenging reading. I second the previous recommender’s choice of Frankenstein.</p>
<p>Let me just add one thing, though: OP, it sounds like your vocab is already good, so reading some hard books might be just the ticket! Your point about rereading is also an excellent one. In general, though, you will optimize your rate of learning and retaining words if you already know about 98-99% of the words in the text. So be careful that you don’t choose books that are toooo hard for you, or you won’t learn the words well.</p>
<p>Encountering new words is like encountering new people. If every third person you meet is a total stranger, by the end of the day, you won’t remember anyone’s name. 
But if you meet people in familiar contexts, surrounded by other people you already know, you’ll learn their name well. In the same way, it’s usually best to encounter new words in the context of a lot of other familiar words, so you want to shoot for about five unknown words a page, or even fewer. </p>
<p>Again, though, OP, it sounds like you already have a strong vocab. This post is mainly for people with small vocabularies who are trying to learn new words: they might want to choose moderately difficult books instead of jumping in to Dickens et al.</p>