“Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long.”
Leonard Bernstein
[Quote supplied by the Quotations Page]
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For this post to make any sense, you first need to know that if I start reading a book, I finish reading it. I can’t remember the last one I gave up on (possibly a Dickens novel, given my antipathy towards him). If it’s a book I haven’t read before, I generally read it straight through as much as possible – it’s always a bad idea for me to start reading something in the evening because I often end up staying awake till 2am to finish it. (I read about 200 pages an hour, by the way, so an average 400-500 page novel takes me… well, work it out.)
The other day I started to read Sahara by Clive Cussler, for the following reasons:
The first couple of chapters weren’t too bad; they set the hooks for the rest of the story by introducing a couple of mysteries, then introducing the central characters and yet another mystery. Already though, unusually for me, I read a couple of chapters and put it down; read another couple of chapters the next day and put it down again. Then last night (having devoured something else I hadn’t read before in a few hours flat, earlier that day), I started reading again. And pretty much immediately, got bogged down by the writing.
“Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.”
Anonymous
[Quote supplied by the Quotations Page]
Is it just me or is there something intensely ironic about that quote and its citation? Although I suppose Anonymous is the best known source of quotes in the world in all of history…
Just because it amuses me, I’m going to post some of the search terms which people have used to reach this blog:
Another word (or phrase) of the day, thanks to Merriam-Webster.
weasel word noun
: a word used in order to mislead a person or to avoid a straight answer
Some people believe that weasels can suck the insides out of an egg without damaging the shell. An egg thus weasel-treated would look fine on the outside, but it would actually be empty and useless. We don’t know if weasels can really do that, but the belief that they could caused people to start using “weasel word” to refer to any term intended to give the impression that everything is fine when the speaker is really trying to avoid answering a question, telling the truth, or taking the blame for something.
Although if you ask me, Dilbert might have a bit more to do with the use of weasel word than is being given credit for.
A couple of Northern Ireland-related mondegreens that I was reminded of this evening:
1. I heard ‘Ballymena poses’ instead of ‘ballerina poses’ in Maxïmo Park’s Now I’m All Over the Shop (on A Certain Trigger).
2. Even after a couple of years spent listening to We Are Scientist’s album With Love And Squalor, I still keep hearing ‘hanging out in County Down’ instead of ‘hanging out and counting down’ in Worth the Wait.
