'I'm a most forgiving man'

[flemmings]

Also I paid full price, hard cash, for Flora Segunda. So when I found this passage:

Udo arranged himself to one side of me, and Vallefor across. Between us, I lay The Eschata, open to the Sigil, just in case.

I did not throw it in the wastebin.

But it was a near thing. Especially now that I'm registering the excess of commas as well, which awareness, I fancy, will plague me until book's end.

(This, dammit, is what comes of ignoring the intuitive voice that says 'If Mlle Untel thinks this book rawks there's got to be something wrong with it.' Maybe I won't read Empire of Ivory after all, though the voting's split on that one.)

Comments

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't that second sentence be: "Between us I lay The Eschata, open to the Sigil, just in case." What awkward pauses! I am with you on excessive commas. I'd have given up already.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't that second sentence be: "Between us I lay The Eschata, open to the Sigil, just in case."

(wrathfully) No, it should not. It should read "Between us I laid The Eschata, open to the Sigil, just in case."

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

RIGHT! hahaha
I really should blog when I'm awake. XD

[shiny-monkey.livejournal.com]

I have problems with excessive comma usage on the packaging of the food I eat :(

[incandescens]

Hm. Indeed.

(I don't remember noticing any inappropriate tenses in Empire of Ivory, mind, if that helps.)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Novik's prose is generally impeccable. My misgivings are just a perverse reaction I have when a work is boosted by someone whose approach or values I have reservations about. No, it makes no sense-- Tolkien for instance is good no matter who praises or pans him. But with more recent authors I tend to look first to see who the most vociferous fangirls are, for 'by their fans ye shall know them' is still true too much of the time.

[incandescens]

That is . . . unfortunately true. I know there are some things I've avoided based on certain ways of enthusing over them.

[shiny-monkey.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking you probably read Tolkein the first time before there was a blogosphere, and other people's opinions were irrelevant. Fangirls there were, but you didn't hear from them quite so easily as today.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

There was buzz aplenty in 1966 but no blogosphere, no.

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

I think by the generation after mine the lay/lie distinction is going to seem as quaint and persnickety as who/whom does to my generation - everyone I know who's my age either doesn't bother with it at all, or has to think quite consciously about the rules. I'll screw it up myself unless I'm thinking very hard, and I had to read that sentence three times before I found the problem.

Oh, heck, now I'm going to have to comb through my manuscript to make sure all my lays are right.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Lay as past tense of lay is sore thumb stickout time. It hits me between the eyes. Lie down and lay down is the one that will sometimes fuzz in my mind.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Oh my, now I'm wondering too. Isn't it "lie down so we can do something naughty" and "lay down your weapon"? And what's the past tense of lie ... I'm pulling a blank here!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Yes. Lie down when there's no direct object- the thing that lies down understood to be 'yourself'. Lay down an object- your sword, your arms, your life.

Past tense of lie is lay. That's where the confusion starts. Makes people think the past tense of lay is also lay.