This week I tried to read a novel that’s coming up for discussion at the library, a bestseller. I don't often read bestsellers, but I like discussing books at the library, and this one had an unusual premise involving an animal, and I like animals. I couldn’t get to page fifty. The sentences were soggy, and every chapter ended with something or someone "glowing palely in the growing dark," "silhouetted by the falling dusk," etc. There was a time when I would have finished the book anyway, if only to complain during the library discussion, but that was last year.photo: Anthony Ulinski
2 comments:
I enjoyed reading this, and loved the photo. I continue to be baffled by what shows up on the best seller lists that is way way below the quality level of what so many of the not-yet-published writers in my classes are producing.
Also--I applaud the word soggy. A winner!
Joyce Allen
"Soggy" is a word I learned from Alice Munro, who wrote of Amy Hempel's novella Tumble Home, "There isn't a soggy patch in it."
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