Word: readerly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...final pages of Powers, the unforgettable story that concludes this book, an old woman realizes that what she wants to do "is not so much to live in the past as to open it up and get one good look at it." That's what Munro offers her readers, the hope of that one good look. Her gift for nuance is such that you find yourself trying to imitate her. But what works for a fiction writer might not be the best idea for a reviewer. You risk having the reader fail to grasp your full meaning...
...While some translators will first read a book from cover to cover to get a sense of the work, Kamoun relies on spontaneity. "If [a book has] been well-received, I will read it for the first time as I translate it, to have the surprises and discoveries a reader would," she says...
...dryly explains: “the truth was, she couldn’t remember whuh wuz funny, dude.” Assuming for the sake of argument that Charlotte is believable, open contempt of her foibles defeats the very purpose of her creation. If Wolfe is siding with the reader in critiquing Charlotte, he shouldn’t present her as the objective witness to college pandemonium at the novel’s outset. In this case, Wolfe is acting as both creator and judge, which not only breaks up the narrative drive, but also results in heavy-handed moralizing...
...achieve this, the book's first two sections examine questions of body, soul and mind, drawing from an array of Greek mythology, psychology and astrology before arriving at the juicy bits. So the reader gains a robust sense of a particular sign and its motivations before perhaps learning, for example, that he was "built to deliver that much more bang for the buck." Though it might make some readers blush, Sextrology, packaged with humor and intelligence, is a rare find: a genuinely new take on the planet's oldest pastime. Thank your lucky stars...
There is certainly something anxiety producing about the NBA list: it adds to one's nagging fear that one isn't reading the "right" books, that there are always hidden gems out there that a more astute and observant reader would have spotted. But that isn't the judges' fault. The only motive that one can reasonably impute to them is a desire to call attention to the eventual winner, The News from Paraguay, by Lily Tuck (HarperCollins; 248 pages). Though why to that particular book, it's a little hard...