I've recently been reading the book Magyk by Angie Sage. (Don't ask for my opinion. I'm not done yet, so officially, I don't have one.) (Notice how I say that right before I'm about to mention an opinion. That personality trait might be important later.)
Well, the other day, someone asked me what I thought of the book. I said, among other things, "The author's really got a way with boldface." Which is totally true, by the by. Every now and then, I'll read a sentence and think, 'Her use of bold here is really great." It's especially impressive to me, because I never use boldface in my own writing. (I do use italics sometimes, as you might have noticed, but I never bold.) (Okay, I'm going to stop typefacing now, because even I know that's probably getting old.)
But, after kvelling about the use of boldface in Magyk, I transitioned into talking about Fly by Night by France Hardinge. That book makes incredible use of Capitalization. Fantastic, actually. The book's Capitalizing really made it that much better. Capitalizing is something that i do sometimes in my writing, but I don't think I do it quite as well as Ms. Hardinge. That's certainly something I'd like to work on.
Well, after we'd been having this conversation for about ten minutes, I realized that we'd just spent ten minutes discussing books in a very strange manner. I mean, I can talk about books for hours, but even I understand that talking about typeface and capitalization for ten minutes and meaning to go on for longer is quite unusual.
Still, I can't help it. Those aspects, when done well, can be Fantastic.
What are your thoughts? What are some things in books that you enjoy that might be unusual to enjoy?
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Provoking post this morning. And I have no answer. Yet.
ReplyDeleteGood post. I like writing that doesn't draw attention to itself. When I'm deeply reading a story, I don't like to be distracted by style, typeface, etc. I just want to be lost in the world without thinking about technical merits.
ReplyDeleteI was so busy devouring the story I didn't even notice the dance of the typeface etc. I've just dug Magyk out and blow-me-down-with-a-feather if the book don't start in italics! I never noticed that before. I'll have to re-read to look out for more chicane, jiggery-pokery!
ReplyDeleteHaha, to be totally honest, the typeface in Magyk was distracting and got rather irritating after a while. But maybe that's just me :)
ReplyDeletePiedmont -- I like the 'yet.' There's nice potential there.
ReplyDeleteMathew -- A reasonable perspective. Being lost in the story is great.
Elaine -- Nice use of jiggerypokery. I haven't seem that used in a while. :)
Vader -- I guess this is a sort of to-each's-own sort of things.
Exactly! In no way am I saying you are lame for loving it! Because you aren't. I just don't like it myself. Variety is the spice of life after all :)
ReplyDeleteVader -- Yes, variety is the spice of life. I had a teacher who used to say it all the time, and now it always makes me smile.
ReplyDelete