Julie > Recent Status Updates

Oh for Pete’s sake!! When will modern authors learn to use the word ‘enormity’ correctly? It means ‘outrage’ or ‘offence’, and not ‘great size’. The word you want is ‘magnitude’. Secondly, please pay attention to subject/object. Jane Austen would never have written ‘He spoke to Mr Darcy and I’ - she’d have known the correct form would be ‘…to Mr Darcy and me’.

I’m listening to the audio book. The woman reading it has the MOST annoying voice. I may have to give up and read it. I suspect there’s a decent book in there somewhere but the voice is so artificial, snobbish and insincere that it’s quite hard to like it.

Postponing this one. I’m not hating it, it just isn’t suiting my mood right now.

Amazingly irritated by the number of comma splices but apart from that it’s interesting.

Not really liking this. I admit it’s creative and imaginative but the authorial voice is so ... I don’t know ... Arch? Patronising? Supercilious? He seems to be mocking all the characters and appearing to like none of them, and as a consequence they are thinly drawn caricatures rather than people with whom you’d like to engage.

It had better start moving a bit faster, that’s all I’m saying.

Did not finish. I just couldn’t cope with the authorial voice: slow, pedantic, patronising, unsympathetic, small-minded. I’m prepared to accept that it was beautifully done - but I just couldn’t stand Tom Crick and refuse to spend any more time in his company.

It certainly is showing its age. The way the female characters are patronised and objectified by the men around them would have been questionable in the 70s, let alone the mid 80s when this was written. Plus the style is awfully plodding. But I am intrigued. I’ll keep going for the time being.

Listening to the audiobook. Last read this many years ago and thought it was excellent. Reserving judgement this time: the audio narration is bringing out the rather annoying and pedantic narrative voice which I hadn’t perceived so strongly at my previous reading; and it’s not so funny as before either. But we’ll see.

Re-reading this. Banks is a writer so full of wonders that a second reading is always rewarding. I am already struck by subtleties and ideas I missed the first time. Phenomenal.