<p>It was not the word “girlish” that I’m hung up on and that makes it ring sexist. It’s the soft, delicate tones for her and the strong, sturdy tones for him. </p>
<p>It’s whatever. It’s just not my cup of tea. People are free to have different tastes- this is not mine. I like books with really strong female characters and you just don’t get a lot of those in this era :)</p>
<p>Very true, surfcity. In our modern today, the point must be known with the first few seconds. We need to know it now, not later, NOW. The same can be seen in books, entertainment, etc. While it is understandable for news, I enjoy “flowery” writing from time to time. I love writing that makes me step back and takes me through every bit of details that allows me to imagine the characters, their relations, their backgrounds, the STORY in my mind. </p>
<p>One thing I don’t like about the whole sexist arguments girls spit out, is that the girls HAVE to be “strong”. The girls have to be “against the grain”. What if a girl is naturally just “girly”. What if she is “soft” and “motherly”. Some women don’t understand the prejudice they’re spitting out against other women. To get hung up upon the word “girlish” and hear an outcry of “sexism” makes ME roll my eyes.</p>
<p>romani- You’re reacting to the content of the words, not the structure. Regardless, there ARE books from that era with strong female characters- Little Women is a great example. Jo was a great female character.</p>
<p>One of the most beautifully written modern day books I’ve ever read from a prose point of view was The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. It was his first novel and made Oprah’s Book Club and won numerous other awards.</p>
<p>I do like Little Women.</p>
<p><em>writes down book suggestion</em> If Oprah liked it, it MUST be good!</p>
<p>Currently, I am working my way through the Tudor Court series by Philippa Gregory. I’ve only read The Other Boleyn Girl and started The Virgin’s Lover. I should’ve picked up The Constant Princess. 
I need to start and finish Divergent before the movie comes out. Need to get through the two of my John Green books. I will definitely add the two books to my list.</p>
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<p>Well, not necessarily. :)</p>
<p>However, this book was so beautifully written I just shook my head at the many beautiful passages and envied the author’s way with words.</p>
<p>It is actually an unusual take on a Shakespeare work, which not every critic appreciated, but I think the praise for the beauty of the writing was pretty widespread.</p>
<p>It’s quite long, though.</p>
<p>Lol I was going to put an asterisk saying this:
*and received multiple awards and recognitions </p>
<p>I am excited to look at it. Should it be accessible at Barnes and Noble? Hmmm…I guess that’s easily google-able.</p>
<p>The more I read and the older I get, the more I appreciate the many different writing styles. I love word flourishes that are musical and paint a picture that only it can paint. I appreciate the feelings and emotions the “words” provoke. I love the different styles from different eras. I also like the boldness and direct, no mincing words style as well. Its a matter of your appreciation level of literature and its art form. Everyone has different appreciation levels.</p>
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I’d suggest that if Oprah liked it (and said so publicly), all it means
is that the author and publisher will likely do well.</p>
<p>As far as period pieces go, the last one I got excited about was
Matthew Pearl’s The Dante Club. </p>
<p>I haven’t read much fiction of late.</p>
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<p>Can you imagine publishing your first novel and having it make the Oprah Book Club? Priceless.</p>
<p>Oprah could do worse than to pick this debut novel.
[A</a> Former Child Soldier Imagines ‘Tomorrow’ In Sierra Leone : NPR](<a href=“A Former Child Soldier Imagines 'Tomorrow' In Sierra Leone : NPR”>A Former Child Soldier Imagines 'Tomorrow' In Sierra Leone : NPR)</p>
<p>Here’s an explanation of how writers view life: <a href=“Why Wasn’t It ‘Grapes of Glee’? Study of Books Finds Economic Link - The New York Times”>Why Wasn’t It ‘Grapes of Glee’? Study of Books Finds Economic Link - The New York Times;
<p>Your question is rather timely, as this NYTimes article appeared just this week.</p>
<p>That was an interesting article. The problem with the sort of numerical analysis that is the basis of the NYT article is the assumption that a writer’s word stock is uninfluenced by anything other than the emotional connotations of words. The title itself, “Grapes of Glee,” is nonsensical because it ignores the allusive historical resonance of the phrase, “Grapes of Wrath,” not invented by Steinbeck. Writers use the material they’ve inherited (Bible, popular song lyrics, etc.). Numerical analyses of corpora are prone to these kinds of errors. You still need to know about the history of style and idiom to make any worthwhile generalizations about a writer’s choice of words.</p>
<p>The sub-Hemingway monosyllabic colloquial style that is the hallmark of fashionable “good” writing now will surely be replaced by grunts and gestures in the next 100 years. We are entering a post-literate world.</p>
<p>NJSue,</p>
<p>What do you mean by “grunts and gestures?”</p>
<p>I like the old-style writing (as well as the new). I think they wrote that way because their lives didn’t include much action or adventure, so the focus was on feelings, relationships and impressions, which they could articulate so artfully. I don’t think most of us could write that way very easily because we were not trained to notice or analyze subtle nuances like they did because they had more time to do so.</p>
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<p>Oh no. 19th-century lives were much more precarious and “adventurous” than ours. No vaccines, no birth control, no antibiotics, no protection from crop failure, no welfare state…people were much more radically insecure than now. Indeed, most people now lead sedentary lives in front of a screen. Not much adventure there. Most modern “respectable” fiction chronicles educated-class petty disappointments (see Franzen, Jonathan).</p>
<p>What I mean by “grunts and gestures” is the impoverishment of expression and deterioration of vocabulary that we are currently undergoing. I’m being hyperbolic but I fear that writing will simply become a dull denotative way of communicating information rather than an art form. High-level literacy is in serious decline, even among the educated.</p>
<p>We don’t speak like they did more than a century ago either. Our society has changed and we are much more direct than the English society that set standards even in America then. The excess verbiage does not appeal to me. I do enjoy long descriptions when they actually accomplish painting the picture with words but not the tedious forms of speech of long ago. Just say what you mean instead of going around and around without making the point! I would not fare well in long ago “polite” society- peasants were much more direct.</p>
<p>The extremely short attention span and shortening of words and phrases is only a very recent phenomenon secondary to cell phones and computers. It has its place but…</p>
<p>We’re not more direct. We have our own language taboos, circumlocutions, and unsayables. They are just different from those in the past.</p>
<p>The preference for multisyllabic vocabulary and long, syntactically complex sentences is literary, not oral. People in the Renaissance did not routinely speak in blank verse even though Shakespeare’s characters frequently do. We don’t really know how people spoke (prior to the advent of recorded speech). Probably people did not speak like George Gissing’s narrators in real life.</p>
<p>People used to revel in the literary and rhetorical aspects of language. They did not believe that writing had to mimic speech in order to be good. The Strunk and White school of thought is a very historically specific and limited one. I do not think that the concise curt style is necessary aesthetically better than the loose periodic style.</p>
<p>I wonder what caused writing to evolve in the way that it did</p>