As can I. When I was young, my mother, who never completed middle-school and never read for pleasure, thought it was weird and that I was going to ‘go crazy.’ Thanks Mom.
BTW, not being able to ‘see’ things in your mind has a name, as I learned recently. It’s called aphantasia, and I have it too. Just utterly unable to visualize a damned thing. I also thought things such at, “picture in your mind” were figures of speech. I can certainly THINK about the physical properties of things, and ‘see’ it in that way, but it’s never a picture or movie.
in the burglar series, the after-work beers that were usually an hour or two were what 3 or 4 paragraphs and usually just a setup for t the next situation
Yeah, I think I found out about it in a thread on this board. Something else weird about me, except this one I hadn’t realized was weird – for 70 years or so. (The faceblindness I’d figured out by my early teens, but didn’t find out there was a word for it until well into my fifties.) Wonder what other surprises still await me.
I tried to read this book, but since I didn’t find the intricate details of the boat’s construction as interesting as the author obviously did, I decided to check out the junior reader’s edition, and ran into the same issue there. Since I knew how the story ended anyway, I simply gave up.
This is disappointing - Finkel is great when lecturing or speaking on YouTube.
Cline’s model, from other stuff of his I’ve seen and read, is that the Late Bronze Age Collapse had multiple causes, none of which are particularly predominant. I’m guessing that held for the book.
Oh god the Dan Brown issue is one that sticks out. Can’t remember which one I started but the writing was akin to…
“the bad man came into a room and he had a hat. The sexy woman who was a doctor with a nice dress smiled at him. Oh, she also drove a fast car which proved she was both sexy and independent”
I couldn’t help but be reminded of “Single Female Lawyer” from Futurama.
I mean, I’ll happily deal with clunky writing if the story is engaging but I have my limits.
One other example recently was a very well known book that my company “suggested” we all read. (I’m not going to mention the title as that will start an unnecessary diversion I’m sure). It was held up as being a definitive academic exploration that was essential reading. It was dogshit from start to finish, so horrendously written that you think someone is having a laugh. But perhaps the strength of its incisive insights stand up to scrutiny and will educate me? Christ no. I think this was written by someone who barely understands what it means to support their argument.
The upshot of the bad writing for Dan Brown was that I couldn’t force myself to read on and get to any semblance of a story. For the supposed “non-fiction” book I was able to struggle through to try and absorb their points but I regret making the attempt as nothing of worth was contained therein.
So ultimately I guess the second one was worse because at least Dan Brown had the decency to write in such an offensively terrible way that I wasted very little of my time.