How Could You Like That Book?

"Reading Neuman’s The Traveler of the Century, I appreciate that he is brilliant, that he effortlessly churns out page after page of complex prose, but I feel the whole thing is an ambition-driven exercise in literariness. Same with so many who flaunt their fancy prose."

I'm not a big reader of fiction. I don't mind fancy prose if the author book is interesting. I know everyone has different interests, but I am tired of authors who ran out of interesting plots years ago, or never had any to begin with; but get seem to get by with fancy flowery prose? To budding new writers, lay off the cigarette imagery. "The room was beyond squalor. The lit cigarette had burned down to the filter. A blue albuteral inhaler was clenched in his right hand, like a baby holds a rattle." Please, we got the imagery with "He had a lit cigarette in the ashtray."

Or maybe, I'm wrong?

I wouldn't take one word out of Nabrakov's Lolita. That said, there's a lot of modern books I wish were under 200 pages. I just don't see the need for 500 pages of anything. That goes 10 fold for technical books.

I'm a poor reader with most fiction, or the fiction I was forced to read in college. My reading skills improved greatly when I was given a tight, usually short story. A Woody Allen story comes to mind. And, I really liked Jack London's book about freezing in the wilderness. Forget the name of both stories, but I was astonished London wrote it on a beach in Hawaii, and the short story Woody wrote was in Playboy. It had nothing to do with sex either.

Since, I'm not a big fiction reader, but I read a lot of non-fiction. My hope is technical books in the future will get better--shorter--to the point. I wouldn't mind if technical authors used numbers to list their points? 1. The idea. 2. The procedure. 3. Problems that might arise.

I wouldn't even mind if author's used numbering like in legal documents. I love visual technical books, but haven't seen any done really well yet. And I see nothing wrong with techniclal books that use a comic book form--like some military manuals are written.

Again, I'm the last person who should comment on a person's writing.

At the point where the author mentions tossing a book after getting halfway through it, I'm wondering whether reading only the first half of books might be a good idea for him.

At the risk of misusing and abusing the term, I find the author's point of view aspergerish: lack of social or emotional reciprocity. He finds it natural that there are things that are interesting and worth reading to him, but not to others. So why would he be stumped by the fact that there are things that others find interesting and worth reading, while he does not?