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Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 10, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Finished Pride & Prejudice yesterday. I was expecting crisp and refined writing but what I got, which certainly was not parallel to, indeed not sharing many aspects with, a style one could generously, or as befits opinion parsimoniously, describe using a range of terms, carefully chusen from the refracted, diffuse spectrum of all potential lexical motifs, as one of focus, indeed moreso not an under abundance of sidewards steps and circumlocution.

Better than Madame Bovary though.

I’ve never opened Pride & Prejudice, but I did attempt Sense & Sensibility and my impression was similarly unfavorable. Austen was indeed a keen observer of human psychology, but her elliptical prose style left me cold. (And I say this as someone whose writing style is not exactly a paragon of Hemingway-esque brevity itself.)