In the past 12 months I've thrown out at least 4 books after reading only a chapter or two because the language was so bad I couldn't justify reading it anymore.
Although I loved "Shopaholic" I had to "edit" my copy so I could feel good sharing it with friends and ....most of all....my daughter. The really frustrating thing for me is that there doesn't seem to be anyplace to find this information out BEFORE you spend the money on the book.
Had I the time I'd be setting up a website for just such a purpose...giving ratings to books. Under the category heading : Books that might have been good based on all I've heard but couldn't read because of language, I'd list these:
"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" Haddon
"Love in the time of Cholera" Marquez
"Water for Elephants" Gruen
"Shopaholic" (Although I did read this one....)
"A Thousand Splendid Suns" Hosseini
"World Without End" Follett
"Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" See
Admittedly some of these contained more "gratuitous sex" than bad language nevertheless I was disappointed to have spent money on them only to throw them in the trash ... I couldn't even in good conscience sell them to the used book store....I didn't want to be responsible for other people reading them!
If anyone has some solution to this I'd love to hear your comments. It's unfortunate to find oneself unable to purchase any book before having someone else read and review it for you. (BTW Amazon's reviews do sometimes give a hint but not always)
Good reading.....
4 comments:
I don't have a solution, it frustrates me too! I wanted to love the shopaholic series, but I just couldn't get through the lack of vocabulary that caused the author to use so many explicit words :(
No solution here either. Unless I volunteer myself to read them all for you...
I just cleaned out from under my bed...and found 4 books I started, then quit reading for just the sme reason. It is almost like you can't read a contemporary writer.....frustrating! But I'm glad to know you are alive! Have you read "These Is My Words" yet? My new favorite book.
I found a murder mystery series that is really fun and very clean AND it has recipes! It's by Joanne Fluke, and the first book is The Chocolate Chip Murder Myster.
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