telophase | (no subject)

I've been listening to the audiobook of Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure by Sarah Macdonald, an Australian who moved there when her boyfriend was transferred.

rachelmanija didn't like it very much, and has a much better review of it than I could give, and if I weren't lazy I'd poke trhough her archives until I found it and link it here, but you'll just have to do that yourself (ETA: or check the comments, where

rachelmanija posted it). Anyway, I just thought I'd mention the one thing about the prose which is driving me up the wall, and which I might not have noticed if I were reading the book normally. It's the assonance. Macdonald is enamoured of words that start with the same sound, especially when they're adjectives and nouns, so the actress reading the book has a hard time trying not to fall into a ricky-ticky rhythm. I don't know what possessed her to think that was a good technique - she's a radio broadcaster so you'd think she'd be more aware of how words sound and how annoying this is when it's overused.

(on a plane) I'm too sleepy, shocked, and for some reason, too embarrassed to scream, so I buzz for sisterly assistance.

Dazed, disoriented, and dusty, I sense a strange sight and sound emerging from the fog.

Now imagine the entire book like that.

She's also got a major fast-food approach to sampling various faiths, and the theme of the book is her searching for and presumably finding some sort of faith, but

rachelmanija covers that. I think.

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http://www.livejournal.com/users/rachelmanija/19000.html

Now I want an icon with the text "dazed, disoriented, and dusty."

She had improved for a big bit of the book, and then she went to Kashmir and the demons of description were let loose and she started applying adjectives with abandon and assonance and it's STARTING TO MAKE WITH THE MADNESS. It's at the point where, when she doesn't use a word that starts with a similar sound, I start wondering what word she would have used, had she but thought of it.

And if you read that paragraph out loud, THAT'S WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE. THE WHOLE BOOK. The last bit I heard in the car before coming into the apartment after work had to do with mangy monkeys and rabies-riddled dogs.

I just went and re-read your review (and dear god I'm now viewing those three Rs in a row with horror) and the thing you mention when you're discussing her attitude towards poverty is a bit reminiscent, of a particular blog I'm reading now, which is by a library technician from WV who went on a medical mission to Central America this past spring. It's fascinating - he's updating day-by-day with his day-by-day experiences, and he's confronting a lot of poverty and having culture shock. But every so often he mentions the desperate poverty, or posts a picture of something he calls a shack, which isn't a shack at all but a fairly decent low-income house for the third world. And it makes me wonder if he's even seen some of the desperate poverty in his own state, or if he's seeing poverty anywhere near the poverty of the Nairobi slums, which is what I tend to think of when people talk about desperate poverty. It seems - emphasis on the seems - like he's dealing with a lot of poor people, but not people who don't know where tonight's meal is coming from, or who are making the decision about which child to feed.

although, i've been listening to the heiroglyphics a lot lately (my friend is taking me to a concert, i'm studying up), and in a couple of their songs they use the "sh" sound in a majorly awesome way.

then again, hip hop does not equal books on india, generally speaking.

and i got the package! wee, L! wee bunnysuits! thank you!

I'm wondering if she was trying to get the Indian lilt, but the Indian lilt is a function of word stresses and not assonance, and she managed to get it pretty good in the dialogue, so I dunno what crack she was smoking.

weeeeeeee! yay! XD