Quote:
Originally Posted by Xoanon
I always thought the perceived wisdom in publishing was that it was supposed to be children who suffered from having short attention spans, not adults? Yet ironically it seems that it's always mainly adults who complain about the length of modern children's books (even before they've read them, half the time).
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So I have a short attention span and haven't read the books? Since you don't know me, all i can say about your point one is that your are mistaken. One the second part, I did not read beyond the the book where i decided I had had enough superfluous verbosity and irrlevant discussions and events. Especially seeing the next one was even longer.
First with Clancy, then with Rowling. I don't know the cause: maybe being able to insist on a longer "author's cut", or not having time to make it shorter (tighten the prose and story) due to th need to publish to stay on the best seller lists, etc. Something happened, to the detriment of the later books.
Of course this is reading the books with some attention and observation, not just using them as time-passing fodder. I imagine the later ones work fine if that is one's reading preference. This is my preference at times as well - for example, I just read the Hunger Games trilogy. I thought highly enough of both authors' early works to be disappointed by the evolution.
Perhaps that is my issue: I had high expectations based on the early works that, to me, the later books did not fulfull.