The Pile of Books

I have been feeling pretty mad lately; its the end of the fiscal year (which is synonymous with doomsday for everyone - the one in the job and the one tackling the one in the job) and though I have had a lot of 'free' time, most of it has been going into making time for me to be able to read anything besides corporate papers in the weekdays. Either way, I am touchy right now and little things set me off. Little things like... 1. There was a not-so-battered copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire lying in the heap at the foot of a second-hand bookseller. Really ?? You had the heart to give away the book where Cedric died ? And Voldemort returned ? I am astounded (disgusted ?) at your emotional strength. 2. An acquaintance said she found Hurt Locker so boring, she walked off the theatre at interval. I am sorry the movie wasn't a musical.  3. Another acquaintance refused to come to Les Miserables. Oh I am so sorry, there are no guns blazing in this one....

Nope. Not my favourite, and not by a long, long shot.  This possibly amounts to sacrilege for may hardened fans (and there are lots of them), but seriously, no, I quite disliked the book. This was my first Stephen King and the netizens/citizens surrounding me have created a pedestal for King, which, though having never read one myself, I was apt to accept and respect. So when I found that the novel was littered with useless slangs and really going nowhere unpredictable with the plot, I was crushed.  As rightly guessed, the language was my biggest concern. Call me old-fashioned or what, it seemed too juvenile to be using such parlance any more; it was too flippant for my taste, and in some parts, outright cheap (though in some cases, that might be pardoned, given that it was the perspective of a twisted psychopath). This story is effectively a script for an CW procedural drama. It looks fine on screen, but on paper, its charm is faded. I am talking Lee Child lev...

This happens to anyone who reads anything at all, right ? From newspapers to classics, our parlance becomes a function of the literary content we are dealing with currently. Right now, I am downing Winds of War (Herman Wouk) , A merican Gods (Neil Gaiman) and Mr. Mercedes (Stephen King), and their styles of prose couldn’t be more different. I am not a huge fan of King’s lingo (I find it too flippant), and naturally, Wouk is bordering on the delightfully stodgy so yes, my normal sentences these days begin with ‘nevertheless’ and end with a ‘booya’. There are two kinds of bibliophiles in this regard (at least in my opinion): those who stun you with their choice and economy of words, and those who wind their sentences for the sheer pleasure of being able to employ all the worlds running amok in the head (see how I did it ?!). Unless you are deliberately trying to confuse someone, being taciturn and yet effective is an amazing ability. You need a very thorough knowledge, naturall...