There are many authors who tell a good story,but simply don't have a way with words.Take Dan Brown for example.I remember not being able to put down 'Da Vinci Code' .I enjoyed it enormously at the time.The facts!I had me opening up dusty old art books from the top shelf to take a close look at 'The Last Dinner'.It is only later that I actually thought about how it was written.Was there a beautiful flow to the sentences? Did I stop and re-read a sentence simply because it gave me pleasure? I didn't. I gulped it down.
One book,while reading which I clearly remember constantly stopping and re-reading a sentence here,re-reading a sentence there was Arundhati Roy's 'The God of Small Things'.Many sentences gave me goosebumps because of their sheer beauty.There is poetry in her prose.The characters she describes conjure up detailed images in my head.
Another author I love who, to put it mildly, has a knack of stringing words words together,of creating the weirdest characters,whose appearance and idiosyncrasies she describes in delightfully intricate detail is Zadie Smith.She Owns the genre of hysterical realism so to speak.
I'll confess there are times when one feels like reading what is popularly known as 'chick-lit' (chick literature! really? but let me not go off on a tangent here).Reading them is just plain entertaining,in a mindless sort of way.Like watching television.
...To be continued...
