I had to post this, because when I saw the headline my mind went immediately to Catcher in the Rye—and then there it was, on the first page! My biggest issue with that particular book was how overrated it is—I had heard for years how amazing it is, so I was expecting basically the be-all and end-all of novels by the time I got around to reading it, and then in comparison to my expectations it just seemed ‘pretty good.’ I had a similar, though more favorable, reaction to 1984. Still a great novel, but no Brave New World, in my opinion. I guess the lesson here is that novels are best received with an open mind and an unformed opinion.
I agree with all the other books on this list (that I’ve read), except The Great Gatsby. I definitely thought it was overrated the first time I read it, but after I had to read it again I thought it was some of the most beautiful writing I’d ever read.
Moby Dick is approaching the top of the pile of books I plan to read. Flavorwire calls it overrated, but I just finished The Art of Fielding, a wonderful book and essentially an ode to Melville. I’m interested to see what side of the debate I land on!
A great piece in The New Yorker about the language battle between prescriptivists and descriptivists.
With all my interest in language, I still can’t decide where I stand on this—rather large—issue. I guess I fall somewhere in between. The copy editor in me wants publications, at least, to be grammatically correct and consistent stylistically. But I’m also fascinated by language usage—and think of how important it is to literature!
Is there a group of middle-ground-ivists? I think I want to hear their arguments.
It made him dizzy. At first he thought it was her spinning. Circling him the way she was circling the subject. Round and round, never changing direction, which might have helped his head. Then he thought, No, it’s the sound of her voice; it’s too near. Each turn she made was at least three yards from where he sat, but listening to her was like having a child whisper into your ear so close you could feel its lips form the words you couldn’t make out because they were too close. He caught only pieces of what she said—which was fine, because she hadn’t gotten to the main part—the answer to the question he had not asked outright, but which lay in the clipping he showed her. And lay in the smile as well. Because he smiled too, when he showed it to her, so when she burst out laughing at the joke—the mix-up of her face put where some other coloredwoman’s ought to be—well, he’d be ready to laugh right along with her.
Why do we like those stories so? Why do we tell them over and over? Why have we made a folk hero of a man who is the antithesis of all our official heroes, a haunted millionaire out of the West, trailing a legend of desperation and power and white sneakers? But then we have always done that. Our favorite people and our favorite stories become so not by any inherent virtue, but because they illustrate something deep in the grain, something unadmitted.
Joan Didion, “7000 Romaine, Los Angeles,” Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Ironically, though, I don’t think these purses would fulfill one criterion that often makes me choose to leave home with a bigger purse over a prettier purse: can I fit a book inside?
Another article that uses the ‘hopefully’ debate as a starting point to talk about the ongoing debate over usage. Turns out I’ve been using all of those words incorrectly. Bummer.
