Word: tedious
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...encounter; and as they pile up, we decide C: (Harvard being Harvard, one does not give D's. Consider C- a failure). Why? Not because they are a sign the student does not know the material, or hasn--t thought creatively, or any of that folly. They simply make tedious reading. "Locke is atransitional figure." "The whole thing boils down to human rights." Now I ask you, I have 92 bluebooks to read this week, and all I ask, really, is that you keep me awake. Is that so much...
British travel writer Jonathan Raban is at his amiable best when his narrative is adrift, even awash. It is easy to see why. Sooner or later a professional journeyer meets boring people in tedious circumstances. Here the land-based pilgrim must lie entertainingly, which is hard work, or tell the ghastly truth. The writer who travels by boat need only conjure a storm, or describe his great relief that the weather is fine. The reader, charmed or alarmed, follows wide-eyed. Raban weathered bores effectively in Coasting, a wry account of a voyage around England in a small sailboat...
Details like these are not mere trivia. They paint a revealing portrait of Harvard's next president that provides a much-needed touch of color to the tedious descriptions of his academic career. Knowing that Rudenstine likes chocolate desserts make me feel a little more comfortable about placing him in a position of power...
...major blame for this tedious production lies with Tennessen, who did an admirable job organizing a 60-piece orchestra, but does a less admirable job coordinating the actual performance. Short bursts of orchestral music which punctuate the vocals are invariably marred by sloppy entrances and exits. The players are tentative on softer passages and overpowering on louder ones. The off-stage chorus, microphoned in, is almost always off-balance and off-sync, and the vocal "jazz trio" is dull and lifeless...
...about his drowned fiance to old friends who never met her. Because Colin lost his love during the first blind rapture of romance, she remains forever perfect. For friends with whom he spent times that he recalls as golden and that they barely recall at all, his ardor is tedious -- especially when he hauls out an immense volume of snapshots of the deceased. His sentimentalizing extends to their marriages, which he extols even as they cope with revelations of sexual infidelity and suffocating possessiveness. When the cheated-upon hostess is carried upstairs, hysterical, Colin assures the others she has always...