Quem lectores laudavere
Saturday, January 12th, 2013 12:43 pmI am pleased to know that I read at the speed of Aristotle and St Augustine, though I'd be more pleased to make that 'Plato and Hypatia.'
OTOH reading like Hypatia is a problem when confronted with 600+ pages of T'ang dynasty murder and madness. So I'm sort of swiftly reading Deception, and cursing all blurb writers to perdition. 'It begins simply enough. In the capital, Lady Wu and her evil mother are plotting against the Empress...' No it does not, rottit. It begins that way if you read so fast you forget the first sixty-five pages, because up till that it's an interesting enough Judge Dee mystery. I shall probably start skimming when I meet evil Lady Wu and her evil mother. Anyway, isn't characterizing someone as 'evil' a sure tip-off that the approach is just that little bit less than subtle?
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OTOH reading like Hypatia is a problem when confronted with 600+ pages of T'ang dynasty murder and madness. So I'm sort of swiftly reading Deception, and cursing all blurb writers to perdition. 'It begins simply enough. In the capital, Lady Wu and her evil mother are plotting against the Empress...' No it does not, rottit. It begins that way if you read so fast you forget the first sixty-five pages, because up till that it's an interesting enough Judge Dee mystery. I shall probably start skimming when I meet evil Lady Wu and her evil mother. Anyway, isn't characterizing someone as 'evil' a sure tip-off that the approach is just that little bit less than subtle?
( Read more... )
