Like all professions book reviewing has a lingo. Out of laziness, haste or a misguided effort to sound “literary,” reviewers use some words with startling predictability.On Paper Cuts, the New York Times book blog Bob Harris lists seven words which crop up in book reviews with wearying regularity . Readers add plenty more (and maybe you also have some?)... and leave me wondering what's actually left.
Anyway, I also slink away, (somewhat, anyway) guilty as charged and promise to do better next time.
5 comments:
Sharon, recently, I read this one, and love it!: "THERE is a delicious irony about the fact that a book as distilled from memory and marinated in the rich spice of nostalgia as......"
(1) one word that i have only once heard someone using in real life: albeit.
(2) 'to deconstruct' is another word that i see people like to throw around a lot. first, as a fancy pseudo-technical synonym for 'to critique' or 'to undo'. and, second, as a way to pretend being a postmodern revisionist liberal or a derrida scholar.
kak teh - i was proud of that ...
bit over the top is it?? did it have you and poor awang goneng howling with laughter? sorry.
burhan - deconstruct is literary jargon which the rest of us poor mortals are no supposed to get. there's this big wall, y'know ...
hey sharon, we love it. Thanks. didn't know abt ot until someone alerted us.
yes, it was in - finally. after i'd been dying of frustration for so many weeks. there was a horrible typo in it too. that can't have been mine!!
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