Quote:
Originally Posted by anamardoll
Parenthetical statements by the narrator. Just read Percy Jackson last night and while I liked it a lot, he had a tendency to do this:
I don't know why, but parentheses HURL me out of the experience and remind me that I'm reading a book. I hate them. Hate, hate, hate. And it wasn't even necessary here -- he could have just said, "Chiron had said that..." and not done the parentheses at all. How odd I am.
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I was an undergrad back when Martin Amis was still writing interesting books. In his early stuff, every second sentence had a parenthetical aside, or so it seemed to me. In my more boring classes I would try to emulate Amis's voice in my essays to liven them up and would try to throw in a dozen parentheses or so. Now that I work for the gov't and get to write a lot of wonderful bureaucratize, I still try to make it interesting to me by tossing in whatever I'm currently reading. I'm working my through Lee Child right now; I'm not sure how Reacher is going to make his way into my next briefing note.
What do I hate in a book?
Lawyer-detective types who seem to never have money issues, are always readily available take on a new adventure, fly planes, sleep with a new woman every night, and get the stuffing beaten out of them but wake up early and pain-free the next day.