Delete Key Awards Finalist #5 – From Alice Sebold’s The Almost Moon:
“And there it was, the hole that had given birth to me.… This was not the first time I’d been face-to-face with my mother’s genitalia.”
“Face-to-face” doesn’t seem quite the right phrase for those body parts, does it?
The Almost Moon might appear to be almost too easy a choice for the Delete Key shortlist, given that Entertainment Weekly and New York magazine have already ranked it among the year’s worst books. It makes the cut partly because it’s written fourth-grade reading level (Grade 4.7), according to the Flesch-Kincaid readability statistics on Microsoft Word, slightly higher than Mitch Albom’s For One More Day (Grade 3.4), first runner-up in the 2007 Delete Key Awards contest.
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One-Minute Book Reviews 
This one demonstrates those moments when honesty-meets-graphic becomes offensive. And stupid. When indeed those two tools (honesty, graphic detail), in the right pen, I mean the right hand, can often knock one right out of the literary park. Still, I am pissed at Martin’s book, so it’s still my vote for DK winner.
Comment by oh — March 1, 2008 @ 3:35 pm |
Glad you made that point. I’m not against honesty and graphic detail, either (which can work in many ways in books, including being funny, as in “Portnoy’s Complaint”). This one isn’t witty or insightful or well-written enough to justify its use …
Comment by 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — March 1, 2008 @ 7:01 pm |