Verb Your Enthusiasm

“Every writer, from novelists and journalists to town-council minute-takers, can enliven their work with a few choice verbs, according to this graceful guide from Pulitzer winner Kaufman . . . During her nearly 30 years as a dance critic for the Washington Post, [Kaufman] honed the skill of choosing precise and evocative verbs to express both motion and emotion. Chapters with appropriately active titles like Energize, Sharpen, Weed, Tantalize, and Zhush It Up are peppered with examples from the likes of Zadie Smith, Wallace Stevens, Anton Chekhov, and Ray Bradbury . . . Kaufman also provides digestible tips and quick exercises, plus a splendid list of verbs that have faded from general usage . . . Calling verbs ‘the secret superpower of language,’ Kaufman posits that ‘nouns are our reality; verbs are our dreams.’ Indeed, this verb-filled outing reads like a dream.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Hurrah! Anyone who cares about writing should tickertape this book’s publication. Let’s brush up on our verbs, people! Sarah Kaufman is the perfect writer for this important subject, and her terrific book couldn’t come at a more critical moment.” —Lynne Truss, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

“Actively useful. A book that makes you want to sit down and write.” —Mignon Fogarty, New York Times bestselling author and host of the Grammar Girl podcast

“Well, yes: Sarah L. Kaufman’s Verb Your Enthusiasm is, at first glance, a primer on the effective use of what we were raised as young folk to think of as action words, but like all first-rate writing on language, it’s also a meditation on existence. This particular meditation is, as well, a call to arms to sharpen the way we think and thus the way we express ourselves (and vice versa) and an almost shockingly adroit guide to how to make every word count. Kaufman excels at illuminating the visceral power of verbs (and, OK, adjectives and adverbs and nouns and all the rest of our word arsenal too; one can’t thrive on verbs alone), both with her own elegant and thoughtful sentences and with the myriad extremely well chosen examples she’s plucked up from others’ writing. Writers—fledgling and expert—will find much here that’s practically useful, stimulating, and enlightening; all readers, I think, will benefit from Kaufman’s graceful exhortation to wield language effectively and—in an era of confounding obfuscation—honestly.” —Benjamin Dreyer, author of the New York Times bestseller Dreyer’s English