Archives
- June 2022 (10)
- May 2022 (11)
- April 2022 (12)
- March 2022 (10)
- February 2022 (9)
- January 2022 (10)
- December 2021 (11)
- November 2021 (11)
- October 2021 (12)
- September 2021 (11)
- August 2021 (11)
- July 2021 (12)
- June 2021 (13)
- May 2021 (12)
- April 2021 (11)
- March 2021 (10)
- February 2021 (11)
- January 2021 (13)
- December 2020 (13)
- November 2020 (11)
- October 2020 (9)
- September 2020 (13)
- August 2020 (26)
- July 2020 (25)
- June 2020 (24)
- May 2020 (26)
- April 2020 (24)
- March 2020 (23)
- February 2020 (28)
- January 2020 (27)
- December 2019 (27)
- November 2019 (25)
- October 2019 (25)
- September 2019 (26)
- August 2019 (24)
- July 2019 (24)
- June 2019 (24)
- May 2019 (29)
- April 2019 (23)
- March 2019 (25)
- February 2019 (25)
- January 2019 (26)
- December 2018 (25)
- November 2018 (24)
- October 2018 (27)
- September 2018 (21)
- August 2018 (27)
- July 2018 (23)
- June 2018 (27)
- May 2018 (27)
- April 2018 (28)
- March 2018 (27)
- February 2018 (18)
- January 2018 (30)
- December 2017 (23)
- November 2017 (29)
- October 2017 (29)
- September 2017 (28)
- August 2017 (31)
- July 2017 (28)
- June 2017 (31)
- May 2017 (28)
- April 2017 (25)
- March 2017 (32)
- February 2017 (30)
- January 2017 (32)
- December 2016 (34)
- November 2016 (35)
- October 2016 (34)
- September 2016 (32)
- August 2016 (29)
- July 2016 (31)
- June 2016 (30)
- May 2016 (29)
- April 2016 (29)
- March 2016 (28)
- February 2016 (29)
- January 2016 (23)
- December 2015 (26)
- November 2015 (34)
- October 2015 (36)
- September 2015 (34)
- August 2015 (29)
- July 2015 (33)
- June 2015 (32)
- May 2015 (34)
- April 2015 (36)
- March 2015 (39)
- February 2015 (26)
- January 2015 (29)
- December 2014 (35)
- November 2014 (35)
- October 2014 (36)
- September 2014 (32)
- August 2014 (40)
- July 2014 (39)
- June 2014 (40)
- May 2014 (38)
- April 2014 (47)
- March 2014 (39)
- February 2014 (33)
- January 2014 (40)
- December 2013 (50)
- November 2013 (30)
- October 2013 (33)
- September 2013 (34)
- August 2013 (42)
- July 2013 (44)
- June 2013 (39)
- May 2013 (40)
- April 2013 (41)
- March 2013 (43)
- February 2013 (40)
- January 2013 (39)
- December 2012 (43)
- November 2012 (52)
- October 2012 (59)
- September 2012 (55)
- August 2012 (53)
- July 2012 (67)
- June 2012 (44)
- May 2012 (61)
- April 2012 (54)
- March 2012 (57)
- February 2012 (63)
- January 2012 (58)
- December 2011 (52)
- November 2011 (61)
- October 2011 (52)
- September 2011 (53)
- August 2011 (62)
- July 2011 (45)
- June 2011 (65)
- May 2011 (61)
- April 2011 (63)
- March 2011 (64)
- February 2011 (64)
- January 2011 (51)
- December 2010 (63)
- November 2010 (83)
- October 2010 (76)
- September 2010 (62)
- August 2010 (50)
- July 2010 (62)
- June 2010 (52)
- May 2010 (72)
- April 2010 (71)
- March 2010 (59)
- February 2010 (56)
- January 2010 (33)
- December 2009 (48)
- November 2009 (42)
- October 2009 (44)
- September 2009 (54)
- August 2009 (36)
- July 2009 (35)
- June 2009 (35)
- May 2009 (30)
- April 2009 (22)
- March 2009 (35)
- February 2009 (18)
- January 2009 (18)
- December 2008 (6)
- November 2008 (20)
- October 2008 (12)
- September 2008 (7)
- August 2008 (7)
Categories
- No categories
A friend of mine ‘can’t’ read anything by Charles Dickens – she says it’s too difficult.
I sat down the other day with “El Tunel” – a book by Argentinian author Ernesto Sabato. I read it for my “A” Levels and enjoyed it so much that I read it several times.
25 years on and it’s almost incomprehensible without a dictionary.
OK – losing facility in a foreign language is one thing, but I would be seriously concerned if it were to happen with my native tongue!
Don’t do it! Do you really want to be part of the dumbing down trend? I’m re-reading Dorothy Sayers and loving it. You get used to the language.
Can’t read anything by Charles Dickens? That’s horrifying!
I think we’ve had this ‘deep English’ conversation before, haven’t we? And the general consensus was ‘Pish tosh!’
I recently read some correspondence between HG Wells and GK Chesterton, who seemed to get on like a house on fire, despite disagreeing on pretty much everything. The letters were beautiful. Descriptive without being flowery, polite without being snobbish, and intelligent without being condescending. An absolute joy to read, in other words. I felt similarly about the letters between Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson. Does anybody write proper letters anymore?
I’m still shaking my head at the Dickens comment, btw…
No, your language is not too complicated!
As Martha said, it is not because most people can’t read and spell anymore that writers need to dumb down.
But there IS a worrying trend. I read an article a few months ago in which a University lecturer said that her English students (note: young people who had voluntarily enrolled on a English Literature university course, so they did know what a book was) couldn’t cope with MORE THAN ONE PARAGRAPH at a time.
I despair.
It’s the 21st century and in so many aspects, we are going backwards. Levels of literacy have plummeted.
I read your books because they ARE intelligent and thought-provoking. I love all the city/underground systems, etc. etc. data your novels and stories include…please carry on in the same fashion.
I lament the death of letter writing. Getting a well written letter used to be one of life’s great pleasures, as was writing a reply. Emails and texts are not the same.
There isn’t enough ‘Deep English’ writing around – by all means try writing stories in different styles, but please carry on writing some stories for my generation – the people who were taught to read and write more than one paragraph at a time without need a rest.
Or even needing a rest.
I think I need a rest…..
*The* book for 10+ aged girls in Canada was always Anne of Green Gables, written about 1910. Today they need a simplified version. I bought it for our library, partly so I could have an Anne to read to the grade 3’s for Prince Edward Island. However, those were mostly ESL students. Encouragement is the answer. At the same time there was an ESL girl in grade 7 who was reading Pride & Prejudice and other *classics* with comprehension and pleasure.
No, Chris, don’t simplify the B&M and keep some work like that- it’s not really Deep English, just intelligent. Write some Basic English if you want but remember that it is Basic English. Surely we should be stretching our brains not letting them laze away the time.
NO NO No Absolutely not do not trim your language. I think it would spoil my enjoyment completely. As i have written before its those descriptions than give your writing such depth and far better than any ‘Soap Opera’ book….
For dumbed-down read Dan Brown. His chapters are little longer than paragraphs in the one I read. Whichever one it was, there was nothing too taxing and he even tells you which Hollywood star his hero resembled, to save the reader’s imagination. and should another movie beckon. I assume his novels are all much about the same.
And I have several letters to write so I’ll have to decide whether broad or fine nib pen and which colour of ink: south sea blue, plum, black cherry or shoreline gold.
Respect to you and your fountain pen, Helen. I heard bits of a conversation on the World Service a week or two back about how penmanship, along with spelling and grammar, had gone *PHUT!* in the face of emails and texting. One of the guests said he had an English teacher friend whose class were working on Paradise Lost(I can only wonder at how the ‘can’t read Dickens’ person would cope with Milton), and through an entire essay one of the students used ‘Stan’ instead of ‘Satan’. What can you do?
so glad everyone is in agreement! It was because of the way CF writes that I love the books. I might get DEEP ENGLISH on a T-shirt.
Well let’s be honest, even if you dumbed down the language, the new audience isn’t going to read about two old men solving crimes. Next, you’d have to continue the series with Bryant and May’s cousin’s sons or some such nonsense, and then those characters would have to be terribly good looking. Tan and whatnot. Rippling abs etc.
Please, admin, don’t let it come to that. Please.
Just discovered, and quickly finished, “Full Dark House.” I certainly had no difficulties with the lanquage. Maybe it is a generational thing – I am 65. I am now ending this post and picking up “the Water Room”. Cheers!
I can only echo the pleas that you not adopt a style that’s “less complex”; I would weep. I love your prose style, how seamlessly you blend playfulness and humor with thoughtfulness and erudition. Those are the very qualities that keep me coming back to your work. I think it was Coleridge who said, and I’m paraphrasing a bit, “do not blame authors for writing books you cannot understand; blame yourself and your own inadequacies.” I suppose that sounds a bit snobblish, but there’s a point at which one has to stand up and say “if you don’t understand this, then your grasp of English is sorely lacking.” It’s all the more sad if the the person complaining is a native speaker. Please don’t cater to the underachievers, the poor readers, the willfully ignorant, and the lazy. They’ve enough drivel out there to last them the whole of their reading lives. The rest of us enjoy and appreciate your work exactly as it is. The pity is that TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) generation have no idea how much they’re missing.
Simple language does not necessarily make a book easy; Cormac McCarthy has a pared down style and it is far from dumbed-down.
As for trying to make your books more accessible, or more fashionable, you can try, but you’re likely to end up just losing existing readers.