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Sep. 16th, 2009 03:00 pmThis last month I've made a concerted attempt to catch up with some of my back reading, so that the piles of books don't get in the way over the next few weeks. The next few weeks are, you see, likely to be inordinately busy and people will be coming and going. I can't expect visitors to know that my piles are meaningful and should not be disturbed, especially when they mostly cover the sittable surfaces. The obvious thing to do is diminish the stacks and put as many books as reasonably possible on the sorting shelf. It looks as if I'll get the number still to read down to a round dozen by Friday, which isn't half bad. Mind you, from Friday they may grow again, but that's a different matter entirely.
By a curious coincidence, several of the novels are recent, but written in the first person in a nineteenth century setting. Reading just now, I suddenly realised why none of them ring true. Even when modern meanings are eschewed,* most of the writers get into a pattern of using a single adjective before each noun wherever they can. These adjectives are almost always either two or three syllables long. The page is littered with them and my eye starts skipping from one adjective to the other, missing the meaning entirely.
The book I'm reading now** is better than most. There are whole sections with a much more natural feel to them, but still, the writer thumps her way across the page with ill-measured adjectives whenever the tale isn't quite focussed. It's a measure of the less important parts of the text, whether her style has a nineteenth century feel or whether it's this other thing.
I stopped reading for a bit (and came back to the computer) when I realised that I was using the pattern of adjectives as a sign that I was supposed to skim read sections. This is not a good way of reading a book!
* my show-off word for the day
**no, no names of books or authors in this post. I'm neither recommending nor warning readers off, just noting something odd.
By a curious coincidence, several of the novels are recent, but written in the first person in a nineteenth century setting. Reading just now, I suddenly realised why none of them ring true. Even when modern meanings are eschewed,* most of the writers get into a pattern of using a single adjective before each noun wherever they can. These adjectives are almost always either two or three syllables long. The page is littered with them and my eye starts skipping from one adjective to the other, missing the meaning entirely.
The book I'm reading now** is better than most. There are whole sections with a much more natural feel to them, but still, the writer thumps her way across the page with ill-measured adjectives whenever the tale isn't quite focussed. It's a measure of the less important parts of the text, whether her style has a nineteenth century feel or whether it's this other thing.
I stopped reading for a bit (and came back to the computer) when I realised that I was using the pattern of adjectives as a sign that I was supposed to skim read sections. This is not a good way of reading a book!
* my show-off word for the day
**no, no names of books or authors in this post. I'm neither recommending nor warning readers off, just noting something odd.