Books: not necessarily difficult.

Norm at the Library has a hopeful note up today. It’s possible to like books with plots in them, and not have to be publicly ashamed at that fact.

Well, folks, it looks like the long literary nightmare is finally over.

via “…they have trained us… to associate a crisp, dynamic, exciting plot with supermarket fiction, and cheap thrills, and embarrassment.” « Stacked.

Maybe now I can admit that I never finished James Joyce‘s Ulysses. I’ve felt overly sensitive about that fact ever since our tour guide in Dublin said he’d read it long ago.

According to the WSJ article that Norm links to,

If there’s a key to what the 21st-century novel is going to look like, this is it: the ongoing exoneration and rehabilitation of plot.

That’s another reason that I’m enjoying A. S. Byatt‘s The Children’s Book: stuff happens. Should I admit that in public? Oh, why not.

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