Category: Literacy

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When a Dunning-Krugerand* Writes Self-Pub Books

Read a *sigh* “cute” series of novellas (touted as novels but roughly 1/3 the length, or less, of anything I’d class as a novel). Irritating. OK, so they were REALLY fast reads. Clean plot/characters (for the most part–a “super upright, never tell a lie” character? Liar. And the character still viewed himself as honest *sigh*) But, one persistent problem: the writer(s) just did not do their homework. Bits here and there just would NOT work or were utterly and even sometimes laughably impossible, but were essential to the plot. “Dunning-Krugerand” moments* destroying suspension of disbelief, and suspension of disbelief was hard enough to begin with given the premise. Bits like that piled up and kept on piling up until the last “installment” was just a slog, finished just so I could notch up a bit of “reader masochism.”

*”Dunning-Krugerand” is a neologism coined–as far as I know–by Larry Correia to refer to those stuck somewhere on the lefthand side of the Dunning-Kruger Curve, having an unrealistic view of their knowledge base and competence, thinking of themselves far more highly than they ought. Usually, it is simply used to refer to those people, but here I have it to characterize the examples of the writers thinking they were using the right word/term but using exactly the wrong word/term, or describing a physical action or some equipment in such a way that they demonstrated they had no earthly idea how such worked in the real world, getting it so glaringly wrong as to completely destroy suspension of unbelief.

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No, my dear illiterate, self-enstupiated dummy

“Drug” is in no way, shape, fashion, or form a past tense of “drag.” (And don’t even THINK of using the tired “dialect” argument. Any dialect that uses “drug” as a past tense of “dragged” is for illiterate, self-enstupiated dummies.)

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Sometimes, It’s the Not-So-Little Things

I often find myself hating to read Western novels. Oh, quite often such fare is the best place to find good heroes and bad villains in a struggle of good vs evil, a sort of morality play which, when well done, is not at all a didactic club over the head, and very often a well-told tale all-in-all, except for one thing: most of them feature horses that are treated as though they are machines, and not all that well-maintained machines at that. It seems many Western writers know diddly-squat about horses, having gained all they think they know from Hollyweird Westerns and other poorly-prepared Western writers.

Chaps my gizzard.

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Not Exactly Wodehousian, But. . .

So very, VERY NOT my “cuppa tea,” but. . . Holly Bell (pen name) has penned a series of “cozy mysteries” with a “paranormal” bent that is just. . . charming. *heh* I would so very much like to see the Amanda Cadabra books turned into a well-done TV series (perhaps the producers of The Vicar of Dibley or folks with a similar set of sensibilities and talents could do the series justice). Why these stories appeal to me might best be described by saying they very nearly as charmingly frivolous and inconsequential as Wodehouse’s typical stories: just fun, and little else.

IMO, the world needs more wholesome fun.

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Amusing Hook, but LOADS to Just Skip or Skim

No, I’ll not name or link to the series. I have made some comments over on Amazon, but this is a bit. . . more scathing, I suppose I should say, and so I’ll just leave that out for now.

I have now read a series of four books with an interesting sci-fi hook that speaks to me. . . and unfortunately says some things the writer probably didn’t intend to say. The hook: extraterrestrial aliens who are utterly captivated by music from Earth. Unfortunately, all the music referred to in the series is second- or third-rate pop crap. I suspect there are two reasons for this:

  • the writer’s target readership probably has no frame of reference for anything but pop crap
  • the writer probably doesn’t even have any familiarity with really good music at all

And it shows.

So, I just read the books (admission: skimming and skipping parts that seemed like utter crap) mostly just to get those moments of extraterrestrial reaction to music.

Interesting for that, but very glad I didn’t have to pay a dime for any of the books, and spent little time actually reading them.

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402 Pages of Not Quite Wasted Time

Every now and then, I pick up a John Sandford pseudo-mystery (OK, they fit the genre, but are just a bit too predictable, mmK?). Usually, it’s for a similar reason as the one I picked up yesterday. My Wonder Woman had a flat, and, to my eye, it looked like a full-on replacement, despite the massive amount of tread left on the thing (when I got there, it was sitting on the rim and looked like it had been driven on it–not something I can really fault her for, and it wasn’t but for a fairly short distance).

So, I took it on the spare to the closest place I could get a passable replacement tire. Goodyear at WallyWorld a couple of miles away. Didn’t want to drive it far on the spare, because the spare that came with the–used–car is directional, and in the position it was on the car, it was rotating backwards. Yeh, yeh, I know I could have switched it out with another tire, but no. Not a big deal for a short drive, but this is the second time it’s been used in that wheel position, and I just did not want to drive it far.

So, as I said, WallyWorld. I hadn’t prepared myself for the wait, so I picked up a book there. The absolute best on offer at WallyWorld was a John Sandford novel. OK. Read the thing (>i>read most of it while waiting). Not bad but not much of a mystery, really. A few quirky characters did liven the plot a bit, but it was still something of a slog. Just not that good, and filled with things that, had it been a Kindle ebook, I could have “report[ed] content error” on many, many occasions. Putnam really needs better quality editors, IMO. Literate ones, at the very least.

*sigh*

Oh, well, I’ll always have the quirky characters–oh, and the descriptive narrative about the geography, etc. There are those, at least.

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Reading. . . Mostly

“In Defense of Graphic Novels”

I must admit that when I was a (very) young lad, I enjoyed both “graphic novels” and comic books–and viewed them as separate classes of reading. Then again, the “graphic novels” I was exposed to 60 years ago were Classics Illustrated that whetted my appetite for the “uncondensed” versions, so I’m a bit at sea as to the new (well, to me) “graphic novel” genre. Although I long ago left highly-illustrated fiction behind me, I too appreciate the place such works can have in enjoyable reading experiences, and in expanding literacy (if the accompanying text is literately-written). I can even see a place for such works as a reader advances in literacy, just for entertainment’s sake if nothing else. Advancing educational goals through enforced rejection of such pleasure reading isn’t, necessarily–advancing educational goals, that is.

Still, most readers would, IMO, benefit from eventually “graduating” to other reading materials, even though that would not necessarily mean leaving “graphic novels” and comic books behind entirely. Of course, looking at the typical reading matter of a normal “adult” American (social media “memes,” captioned “cute cat pics,” and highly-illustrated–with photos–popular magazines, etc.), it doesn’t seem that many Americans go much beyond comic book reading, anyway.

Sometimes, “educators” vitiate learning by sucking any joy at all out of it.

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Literary Influences

I relearned how to walk (well, learned how to wak under some circumstances) from Natty Bumpo and Hawk-Eye when I was nine.

Thank you James Fenimore Cooper.

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No, Cupcake, You Are NOT “Smarter Than a Fifth Grader”

*sigh* I see things like this all the time, mostly in social media, “news” articles from established Hivemind outlets, and more and more in published works whether from traditional “gatekeeping” publishers or self-pubs: the inexcusable abuse of the simple past tense when past perfect is dictated by the sense of the statement, as in: “14 Zip [XYZ] Hacks You’ll Wish You Knew Earlier.” No, “You’ll (you will) wish you HAD KNOWN earlier.” Often it is in the same work where the writer (and any “professional” editorial/proofreading eye) also has no clue about forming conditional statements, especially past [unreal] conditionals, for example, “If I WOULD HAVE owned a car, I would have driven to work.” No, cupcake. “If I HAD owned a car, I would have driven to work.”

These are all too typical, “You are NOT smarter than a fifth grader” literacy issues.

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Sometimes, it’s the little things, ya know?

*smh* at an otherwise quite competent writer who committed two wrongs in a recent work: consistently misusing “surly” when meaning “surEly” and failing to hire a competent proofreader (or editor). Apart from that consistent error, this particular piece is actually pretty good. Still. . . it’s little things like this that irk–sometimes more than major gaffs.