Thursday, June 14, 2007

Harry Potter and the Excess of Adverbs

Bede has some theories on what's going to happen in the last Harry Potter book. I'm glad he recently reread them all. I appreciate what J.K. Rowling has done in terms of getting children to read other 300+ page books while waiting for the next HP installment, but I find Rowling's writing style a little hard to take. Among other things, I get a little winded by the glut of adverbs. It was when Draco Malfoy's flunkies "guffawed sycophantically" that I had to put down the HP book in question and gasp for air.

Disclaimer: I'm not a member of the grammar police. I will never get into online debates along the lines of "You corrected my grammar but you made a grammatical error in your own correction, nyah, nyah." (If I find an embarrassing typo in your post, I'll email you privately. Please do the same for me.) Also, I don't want to ruin your enjoyment of the books to which you kvell. However, it is hard for me to read books when I can't lose myself in them because I keep tripping over stylistic quirks in the stories. That's all.

Another disclaimer: For some reason, Joss Whedon's penchant of transforming nouns into adjectives is charming. Color me inconsistent.

3 comments:

tanita✿davis said...

But, the Jossman, well, he can do no wrong. You know how it is.

Saints and Spinners said...

Tadmack: Yeah, Joss can get away with a lot. I'm still peeved with him about what he did with Tara and Willow, though. Grrrf! Bad Joss.

Lone Star Ma said...

I am looking forward to that book, adverbs and all. i just got a bumpersticker that says Republicans for Voldemort.