Quote:
Originally Posted by bookfanmd
If it doesn't grab your attention within the first chapter it doesn't, but it's worth a second look.
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Wise words, I think. As I see it, our attention span and way of reading has changed in the last hundred years.
Previously, people enjoyed (or tolerated) a slow beginning in which the characters and their situation were established in a leisurely way, with a lot of telling detail.
Now, many readers have a shorter attention span, perhaps due to the influence of television or other media, and demand a structure which is faster-paced from the opening, and where chaprers are short and end with either cliff-hangers or hooks to pull you into the next section.
Also, we read in shorter periods: to while away a quarter of an hour while commuting, or to fill in a gap at the dentist's waiting room. Our ancestors would read as their main leisure activity, so a long winter evening's read was a more leisurely activity to be savoured more slowly than our reading.
I think that the moral is that we need to give classic texts more time than the latest Dan Brown.