Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:42:15 -0400
From: "Michael Walsh" <mjw at press.jhu.edu>
To: "'WSFA members'" <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: XKCD on "Anathem" ??
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

> Michael Nelson <mike.nelson at seahunt.org> 3/31/2009 5:23 PM >>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Michael Walsh [mailto:mjw at press.jhu.edu]
>> Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 9:53 AM
>> To: WSFA members; wsfa-forum at yahoogroups.com
>> Subject: [WSFA] XKCD on "Anathem" ??
>>
>> http://xkcd.com/483/
>>
>> At 980 pages ain't no way I'm reading this in time for Hugo
>> voting.  Nope, = no way.  Life is too short.
>>
>> At one point I thought the best way to stop the proliferation
>> of Big Fat = Genre Novels was the force people to use a quill pen.
>>
>> But then I thought of Dickens, Trollope, and Gibbons.
>>
>> "Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book. Always,
>> scribble, = scribble, scribble, eh?"
>>
>> (The Duke of Gloucester, on being presented with Volume 2 of
>> The Decline = and Fall of the Roman Empire.)
>
>Anathem starts to get good after about 300 pages.

That's so not encouraging.

> Rip out another 200 or so
>pages of "Oh, look at what a clever writer I am" crap mixed in with the
>actual story-telling and you're left with a fairly good novel.

Sigh.  Sounds like another "Print What He Sent" sort of book.

mjw