Some words I learnt reading Nabokov's autobiography

viscid, hiemal, massacrous, consociative, tyro, camphine, amelus, camphoraceous, twangy, ghyll, posy, laciniate, coeval, concolorous, persiflage, concierge, plangent, thetic, couvade, skein, tinnitus, photism, regardant, crenelated, ophryon, oriel, ecchymotic, xanthic, entoptic, retiary, to caterwaul

INTERVIEWER Do you feel you have any conspicuous or secret flaw as a writer? NABOKOV The absence of a natural vocabulary. An odd thing to confess, but true. Of the two instruments in my possession, one—my native tongue—I can no longer use, and this not only because I lack a Russian audience, but also because the excitement of verbal adventure in the Russian medium has faded away gradually after I turned to English in 1940. My English, this second instrument I have always had, is however a stiffish, artificial thing, which may be all right for describing a sunset or an insect, but which cannot conceal poverty of syntax and paucity of domestic diction when I need the shortest road between warehouse and shop. An old Rolls-Royce is not always preferable to a plain jeep.

(from here)

One way of reading books is to go into them looking for obscure words, like a lepidopterist who wades into the woods hoping to capture some elusive species of butterfly. The plot and characters may be interesting, but are part of the scenery and do not motivate the expedition. Each paragraph is like a rock or bush that must be examined, in case some beautiful insect is hiding there.