I'm kind of OCD in the way that if I start reading something, I like to finish it. That includes a movie, a television series, an audiobook, a video game (not that I have any time for those, sadly) or a pot of coffee.
But this morning, I started an audiobook I just couldn't get through.
It's a book called Better Than Great: A Plenitudinous Compendium of Wallopingly Fresh Superlatives by Arthur Plotnik and you would think that it's title alone would be enough for me to know that I wouldn't enjoy it.
Still, I put aside it's annoying title and gave it a try. The back of the book gave me the impression that its purpose was to help writers come up with new ways to describe things. I need to work on my descriptions, so maybe this book would have the answers. Unfortunately, that's not quite what this book was.
The introduction did give me a lot to think about, though. The author talks about how we culturally will adopt adjectives and adverbs and then take away their power by overusing them. Words such as super, incredible, awesome, and even great have become so common they have no impact on the reader. They have simply become synonyms for "good."
After the introduction, however, it all goes downhill, at least as far as the audiobook is concerned. The majority of this book is a reference guide. The author describes a common superlative and then proceeds to list various creative synonyms. These creative ways to say "great" are mostly combinations of two or three other adverbs. Let's just say it's not my style.
So I quit listening after the first disk. It wasn't so much that I disagreed with the author (even though I did) but that I just couldn't drive in my car for an hour listening to someone reading me adverbs. Stephen King claimed the road to hell is paved with adverbs. Well, this book is the soundtrack.
But I don't want to crap all over the whole thing. It's intro is worth a read/listen and I think it could serve as a pretty good reference guide for a writer or blogger who gets stuck using the same superlatives over and over. So if you see it at a library, by all means flip through it. You might find something you can use.
Thanks for giving this audio a try, Jason. I think the producer might have had the visually disabled in mind as an audience willing to listen to word lists. I, too, recommend a look at the printed version, with introductions to each of the fifteen categories of alternatives to "awesome" "amazing," and "incredible."
ReplyDeleteArthur, Thanks for visiting; I appreciate the comments. I hope I wasn't too hard on the book. The audio format just didn't agree with my commute. I think the print version is definitely a good reference guide for bloggers and writers who need to come up with more variety in their language, myself included. Cheers!
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