December 1, 2006
Not a Fan of Long-Windedness
I made it five pages into Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses before I hit this sentence:
“At the hour he’d always choose when the shadows were long and the ancient road was shaped before him in the rose and canted light like a dream of the past where the painted ponies and the riders of that lost nation came down out of the north with their faces chalked and their long hair plaited and each armed for war which was their life and the women and children and women with children at their breasts all of them pledged in blood and redeemable in blood only.”
I put the book down and don’t plan to pick it back up. National Book Award Schmaward.
Cat: | Time: 10:03 pm (utc+8)
December 1st, 2006 at 10:57 pm
I finished it….
Longest sentences I have ever read without punctuation. Try to speak that without pausing.
If you get over that though the book is ok. Great? No. Ok.
btw there is one sentence in the book that is much longer than that if I recall. lol
December 2nd, 2006 at 2:38 am
Exactly how I feel about Da Vinci code…the first 100 or so pages were PAINFUL but I felt I was pot committed so I finished it..what a rip off…
December 2nd, 2006 at 9:42 am
dnf: Thanks for the warning. I can’t stand pretentious writing.
Amir: I tried reading Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress (?) long ago and it was so bad I put it down within the first few pages.
December 2nd, 2006 at 11:45 pm
c. maoxian — try nelson demille’s THE GOLD COAST
December 3rd, 2006 at 7:45 am
one way: Thanks for the tip… someone recently recommended another Demille book, but the title escapes me now. Ah, I remember: The Charm School.
December 3rd, 2006 at 9:57 am
THE CHARM SCHOOL is a great Demille book too, as is THE LION’s GAME, but you won’t read a better book than THE GOLD COAST.
December 3rd, 2006 at 11:19 am
one way: Thanks again. Now for the tricky bit: finding it in China. ;-)