| Re: Do people read glossaries?
Having just finished reading The Lamplighter by D. M. Cornish, it occurs to me that the series "Monster Blood Tattoo" is a good one to bring up in this thread.
Both of the books to date (the first one is called Foundling) are heavy (an understatement) on invented words, as well as existing words used in new ways. In context, it's usually possible to get a rough idea of what the words mean, so the glossary (it's called an Explicarium) isn't absolutely necessary, but it certainly makes the going easier, as well as containing a dizzying number of fascinating details. In terms of reorienting one's brain to a bizarre new world these books take a certain amount of effort, so they are definitely not for everyone.
However, there is one thing about them that might interest you, Spectrum, in particular.
Instead of footnotes, each chapter begins with a lengthy definition, in the place some authors would put an epigraph. Sometimes the word is of little importance (although interesting), but sometimes a definition appears in a very timely manner in terms of understanding what immediately follows.
And it seems to me that for the kind of book you said you are writing, this method -- or one very similar -- might work very well. |