I’ve just listened to the audio version of Atlas Shrugged, available from Audible (52 hours, 20 minutes, 28 seconds). Something caught my ear that I hadn’t noticed in the print version: the word “chuckle” (noun or verb) was used 127 times in the book. The word “shrug” was used merely 49 times.
Makes sense. Expressing strong emotion is a sign of weakness; a chuckle is as close as Randian ubermenschen are allowed to get to a real laugh.
How many times is “sneer” used?
Every author seems to have their favorite words. In John Norman’s “Gor” novels, nobody ever “looks” at anything. They “regard” it.
There’s also the “thesaurus on their lap” author, wherein each paragraph uses a different synonym. A few paragraphs of “Shades of Grey” got me to notice – oh, yeah, heh, I wrote like that in college too.
Or “astonished”?
For another author it was ‘gibbous’ and ‘batrachian’, among others.
All the better to display his coruscating wit.
I’ve never read Rand at length, but I understand “gaunt” may be a favorite of hers as well.
Lovecraft’s use of “squamous” always sticks out like a sore thumb to me; it’s a word never heard outside either a Lovecraft story or a bad visit to an oncologist.
Why would you do that to yourself? :eek:
I mean, even my father thinks Atlas Shrugged is one of the worst books ever written, and he agrees with her viewpoints.
Thomas Covenant: Nobody needs stuff; they have exigencies.
There’s an SF book I read about 25 years ago - I think it was by Margaret Weiss - the name of which I can’t remember, but which I still think of as the Grimly Book. I swear to Og, the word appeared on every single page. It was… grim.
I recommend the 8-9 hour long abridged edition narrated by Edward Hermann. Much shorter, and he does a good job. He also did an abridged version of The Fountainhead.
Plus, everything is “eldritch” and/or “puissant”. Everything.
China Miéville uses the word *pinioned *way too often, but it reached a height in (IIRC) Perdido Street Station. I swear that book contained more instances of the word than every other text I’ve read combined.
“Atlas Chuckled” …so that’s what causes earthquakes.
Well it did have a birdman with missing wings as a major plot point…
And a mad scientist investigating how various species of flying things are able to fly, and a non-flying humanoid species where the females have winged beetles for heads, and generally lots of beings with lots of weird appendages trying to control one another’s actions, physically or otherwise … can you blame the author for leaning a bit heavily on “pinion” and its siblings?
(I need to give Perdido Street Station another read. I’ll check for pinions. :))
I actually find this to be the greatest weakness of audiobooks: overused words reaaaally jump out at you after a while.