I tell ya there's nothing like reading a Mordecai Richler book to make you realize how much you don't know! I have begun to read "Barney's Version" and 6 hours into it I'm only on page 12. I have been researching phrases, references, inferences, parallels and words that I either thought I knew, vaguely know or know nothing about.
Each paragraph is wrought with words that cannot be taken at face value or otherwise you will miss the whole point of him making use of such words or phrases. Like many of his previous books I have read, I have a list of words and a dictionary next to me. Only this time Microsoft Word is my scrap paper and Google is my research partner.
Already it looks to be a promising book, but as I further into it the larger my short term vocabulary becomes. People have wondered where I get the words I sometimes use, the "big words" I often put into prose, and Mordecai Richler is one of the sources for that. Because there's nothing worse than reading a book or a magazine and not fully appeciating the strength of the sentence due to not knowing the word of choice, and it is for this reason that I check out these words and their etymology in an effort to understand what the author had intended.
I use big words because sometimes one word encompasses what several may!
So I suggest everyone read a Mordecai Richler novel so that you too can spend several hours of research for each hour of reading. . . and at the end you'll have a larger vocabulary and a greater breadth of knowledge and most of all a snipit of understanding of his brand of Canadian culture.
