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Random readings on the checkout line
Sunday, 20 June 2004 03:11 pmI was standing on a checkout line with Secret Agent Jim, who was convincing me to buy the cheap store-brand cat food instead of the expensive stuff Morgan and Wang normally eats but which requires a trip out to PetSmart or some other such pet boutique. There are only two foods on this planet Morgan will eat, if you don't count grass, bugs, hair, and the lower halves of geckos, one of which is Little Friskies Ocean Fish flavour, which for some reason has been completely phased out by my local supermarket, and the other is Royal Canin, said expensive boutique food.
As I say, we were on the checkout line, about to buy Food #8 That Morgan Won't Touch And Will Be Passed Along to Jim's Omnivorous Cat Cooper, when I spotted a copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on the impulse-buy shelves.
Aha, I thought. A chance to find out how that crazy incoherent scene where the bad guys become good guys really plays out in the novel. I found the scene and read it while on line.
I guess you had to have been reading the book from the start to understand that scene, because it was just as crazy incoherent, WITH SENTENCES IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE THAT MAKES THEM DRAMATIC and with the sloppy prose that previously kept me from reading more Harry Potter.
Every novel has its share of sagginess—not every sentence is going to be a treasure, unless you're Nabokov or Eco or Eco's English-translator and then only for certain novels. However, as this was a dramatic, important, climactic scene, I certainly expected better than an overwrought chat room.
But that's just me, and no one really cares if a handful of non-believers don't fancy Harry, and besides, my own writing is unreadable at the moment.
MAYBE I'LL START WRITING IN CAPS.
As I say, we were on the checkout line, about to buy Food #8 That Morgan Won't Touch And Will Be Passed Along to Jim's Omnivorous Cat Cooper, when I spotted a copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on the impulse-buy shelves.
Aha, I thought. A chance to find out how that crazy incoherent scene where the bad guys become good guys really plays out in the novel. I found the scene and read it while on line.
I guess you had to have been reading the book from the start to understand that scene, because it was just as crazy incoherent, WITH SENTENCES IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE THAT MAKES THEM DRAMATIC and with the sloppy prose that previously kept me from reading more Harry Potter.
Every novel has its share of sagginess—not every sentence is going to be a treasure, unless you're Nabokov or Eco or Eco's English-translator and then only for certain novels. However, as this was a dramatic, important, climactic scene, I certainly expected better than an overwrought chat room.
But that's just me, and no one really cares if a handful of non-believers don't fancy Harry, and besides, my own writing is unreadable at the moment.
MAYBE I'LL START WRITING IN CAPS.
