Books: quick, quick, slooooooooooooow
May. 29th, 2009 06:05 amTwo very quick reads, yesterday: Slow Storm by Danica Novgorodoff and the final instalment of Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, both tomes being graphic novels.
( general observations, but not really what you'd call a 'review', like )
Those were the quick reads. The slow read is proving to be The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby, which is trying to explain what the author describes as the rise of anti-rationalism in the US, through the context of the nation's development from its declaration of Independence onward. This is proving to be a tough read, with lots of big words in dense sentences, with the occasionally sloppy proof-reading adding to the burden (words out of order, words substituted and so on). Jacobs also goes for the cheap trick of quoting survey results (legit), and then tacking on her own unsupported assertions in the same paragraph, in the hope, I cynically suspect, that the proximity of hard data lends her opinion greater substance in the mind of the reader.
However, that's not to suggest that I don't like the book, more just to say that I'm finding it hard-going, and I feel, reading it, that I need to be in questioning mode (read each sentence, then ask 'why?').
( general observations, but not really what you'd call a 'review', like )
Those were the quick reads. The slow read is proving to be The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby, which is trying to explain what the author describes as the rise of anti-rationalism in the US, through the context of the nation's development from its declaration of Independence onward. This is proving to be a tough read, with lots of big words in dense sentences, with the occasionally sloppy proof-reading adding to the burden (words out of order, words substituted and so on). Jacobs also goes for the cheap trick of quoting survey results (legit), and then tacking on her own unsupported assertions in the same paragraph, in the hope, I cynically suspect, that the proximity of hard data lends her opinion greater substance in the mind of the reader.
However, that's not to suggest that I don't like the book, more just to say that I'm finding it hard-going, and I feel, reading it, that I need to be in questioning mode (read each sentence, then ask 'why?').
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