Word: reader
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Picking on Abigail Adams first, Mayo suggests that even though she's not the "submissive hausfrau" that the "lazy reader" would probably consider her to be, that's probably the only reason Council member Brent McGuire decided to choose her. Evidently playing the part of the "lazy reader" himself, Mayo ignores McGuire's explanation of why he chose Adams 300 years after her death, or even his praise of her strengths. What Mayo seems to focus on instead is the seeming contradiction that any strong female could "recognize the protective impulse in a man, [and] also invoke the name...
...author's new book destroys itself before the reader's eyes, as a fascinating popular history battles without success to free itself from a fat, tedious novel. What is interesting here -- Wouk is right about this -- is the improbable succession of bluffs and heroics by which the new and perilously weak Jewish state managed to defend itself. But the writer, now 78, chooses to deal with Israel's wars, and the confounding historical intricacies that shaped them, on a level that allows only slightly more subtlety than a grade- school Thanksgiving pageant...
...furniture of novel writing clutters chapters that might otherwise explain what happened. It is simply irritating, for a reader trying to understand the murk of the Suez crisis, to be patronized by docudrama as characters dash on- and offstage costumed as a paratrooper, a general, an intelligence operative, their wives and mistresses, and so on. Or, to take the contrary view, it is emotionally unsatisfying to read endless stuff about John Foster Dulles and Suez when what you want is the paratrooper and the lady in intimate clutch...
...judge Brent McGuire, it was "refreshing to hear a feminist not only recognize the protective impulse in a man, but also invoke the name of God." Mrs. Adams apparently once wrote to her husband that she (as a woman) was "placed by providence under your protection..." The lazy reader might think that McGuire just meant to call her "a noble but submissive product of her time...
Perhaps more important, the more vague and abstract such a story is, the more vague and abstract is the impact of the story on the reader. If a story is put in a real context that the reader cares about, the reader will connect to the story. I hope those who picked up the paper yesterday and read the lead story made that connection...