u/BlinkTwice874

I have been struggling lately with what I would call “weak prose”. I sit down to write something and it comes out too flowery, purple, layered with adjectives or just uninteresting. It reads too slow or the pacing is somehow off, the words are not as precise as I’d like them to be, and it just doesn’t succeed in becoming as strong of a piece of writing as I’d like it to be.

Any tips on how to strengthen your writing? I want the prose to be tighter, more concise, somehow more to the point - but when I try simply removing all the adjectives / adverbs, it feels too simplistic.

How do the greats do it? Has anyone here come up with a reliable way to improve or strengthen their writing overall? Can it get better? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

The initial part of this post is a brief review of five books, followed by questions for discussion.

I have recently been on a memoir kick, my recent favorites being:

- My Family And Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

- Coming to My Senses by Alice Waters

- Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

- Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner

- Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Bourdain

+ The Diaries of Anais Nin (not sure this counts as memoir per se, but still a fascinating account of a life and inner world).

I was pleasantly surprised by the Alice Waters book, as it was well-written and traced the very eclectic and interesting life she led before and after opening Chez Panisse. Travels, adventures in other lands, protests at home in California, coming of age during the 1960s and 70s.

I loved the Gerald Durrell book, his writing is tender and beautiful and paints a vivid portrait of his family’s life growing up on a Greek island in the 1930s. I’ve read some books by his brother, Lawrence Durrell - who was “actually” a writer - but I preferred this one by his little brother. It felt real and pure, good-hearted in a way not many books feel.

Kitchen Confidential is interesting for anyone, particularly if you have worked in the service industry, but maybe also if you haven’t. It gives a rare look into what happens behind the scenes, and offers a glimpse into the particular mind of its writer. Bourdain was a fascinating person even outside of his culinary career, so I enjoyed this one a lot.

Crying in H-Mart - beautifully written, I found I couldn’t put it down once I started. It is deceptively simple, dealing with the more mundane parts of life as well as the more extraordinary, and was one of the only books in recent history to make me cry.

Four Seasons in Rome - I recently spent some time in Italy and enjoyed reading this account of a year spent living in Rome. It’s equally poetic and honest, telling not only of the culture they dove into (him and his wife), but also the challenges of raising two young children (newborn twins) while living in a new and different place. An easy and enjoyable read with lush and vidid descriptions of time and place.

Anais Nin - I recently read Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller and then got into Anais Nin’s writing, to see the other end of the stick, so to speak. Her writing is real and unfiltered, her diary entries ranging between poetic and illusory. I loved reading them and it made me even more curious about both her’s and Miller’s lives, as well.

After reading these memoir-style books, I began thinking of the genre as a whole. It’s one of my favorite things to read, yet I don’t hear about memoirs nearly as often as literary fiction or other types of writing. I wanted to ask:

- Do people (you, who’s reading this) still read memoirs?

- Are they lumped in with literature, or do they usually have their own place?

- What do you think is the value of writing a memoir-esque piece of writing in today’s day and age?

- Would you read a “memoir” of an average, normal person’s life, or only one of someone famous or already well-known?

I’m curious to hear from literature readers about their thoughts on memoirs as books and as a genre of its own right.

Looking for people who have read Two Captains by Veniamin Kaverin. A dear friend of mine brought a beautiful copy of the book back for me from Moscow, in its originally Russian - unfortunately my language skills are beginner at best, and it will be a long time before I can read it as it was written. I’ve managed to find only one reliable English translation, which isn’t the best - the language is awkward, it reads like a translation, if you know what I mean.

I studied Russian literature in university and have read wonderful English language translations of other works by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, but unfortunately they have not done Kaverin, to my knowledge.

I began reading the translation anyway, and am about halfway through. I love the story and am deeply invested in the characters, it just feels like a part of the experience is missing, as I can’t quite get the feel for Kaverin’s own writing (what his language would feel like or read as in the original Russian).

For anyone who has read the book in its original language, what did you think of it? Did you also grow up with it, as my friend did? (He said he read it as a boy, and it impacted him quite a bit). How would you describe Kaverin’s writing, his literary style, the language that he uses? I have the feeling that it is a beautifully-written book, but the stiltedness of the translation is keeping me from seeing the whole picture as it must have been meant to be.

Any thoughts on the book or story itself are also welcome. I am enjoying the tale so much that I think I will try to find a translation of

Looking for people who have read Two Captains by Veniamin Kaverin. A dear friend of mine brought a beautiful copy of the book back for me from Moscow, in its originally Russian - unfortunately my language skills are beginner at best, and it will be a long time before I can read it as it was written. I’ve managed to find only one reliable English translation, which isn’t the best - the language is awkward, it reads like a translation, if you know what I mean.

I studied Russian literature in university and have read wonderful English language translations of other works by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, but unfortunately they have not done Kaverin, to my knowledge.

I began reading the translation anyway, and am about halfway through. I love the story and am deeply invested in the characters, it just feels like a part of the experience is missing, as I can’t quite get the feel for Kaverin’s own writing (what his language would feel like or read as in the original Russian).

For anyone who has read the book in its original language, what did you think of it? Did you also grow up with it, as my friend did? (He said he read it as a boy, and it impacted him quite a bit). How would you describe Kaverin’s writing, his literary style, the language that he uses? I have the feeling that it is a beautifully-written book, but the stiltedness of the translation is keeping me from seeing the whole picture as it must have been meant to be.

Any thoughts on the book or story itself are also welcome. I am enjoying the tale so much that I think I will try to find a translation of Open Book next.

A professor friend recently recommended The World Goes On by László Krasznahorkai to me, as I had had recently finished some works by Olga Tokarczuk and he thought I might enjoy this as well. I downloaded a sample of his writing to get a feel for it, and was surprised by the unique syntax and run-on sentences (but intrigued nonetheless).

For those who have read his work, what do you think of his particular style? Is it inaccessible or does it pull you in after a while? Would you agree with The World Goes On as a place to start, or would you suggest another of his works?

I’m quite curious but wanted to hear what those who had read more of his writing had to say before I dove in. I’m willing to put in the work to get into it, I’d just like to know what I’m getting into first. Any thoughts welcomed!

Thinking again about Ted Chiang (always), in particular his story Tower of Babylon. I loved the way that it was written, and the fact that it took a biblical basis and played around with it, creating a story of its own.

After recent discussions here on genre concerning the stories by Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, it made me wonder what constitutes science fiction or speculative fiction, and how stories like Tower of Babylon fit into that, especially where they draw on biblical origins.

Tower of Babylon doesn’t necessarily scream “sci-fi” to me, and seems to be more of a philosophical or speculative take on a biblical tale in an almost “weird fiction” style. The story Library of Babel by Borges comes to mind, and I was wondering why we largely accept Chiang’s story as “science fiction,” where things like Library of Babel and most of Borges’ work is considered literary or weird fiction.

Is it just because Chiang himself is a science fiction writer and it was published in his anthologies? Or is it the nature of the story itself - the ideas that it brings up in terms of the nature of the world?

Would you categorize something like Borges’ Library of Babel in the same way, or something else that plays on biblical origins and explores it in a philosophical lens?

I know this is a very specific inquiry, but I have been interested in reading and writing stories along this vein, so I was wondering how people in this community conceptualize them and if more stories along the speculative, biblical, or philosophical would be considered science fiction.

I recently came across a video of a literary editor who claimed that the only books that sell nowadays are those written in first person present tense point of view. Many of the most marketable books of the last years have been things like ACOTAR and other fantasy romance books, fast-paced fiction, and reader-insert narratives that rely on this particular point of view to cater to a reader who wants an easy, immersive experience.

Response from readers said things like third person is “too difficult to follow” or “not as easy to connect emotionally with the characters”. A counterpoint was that this is “destroying” literature, as third person or omniscient narration perspectives have been widely celebrated and used for years before the somewhat recent shift to the first person craze. The vast majority of best-selling (and BookTok famous) books now seem to utilize the first person present as a way to provide an easy, accessible, and “personalized” experience for the reader.

I’m curious as to what other people think about this, both as readers and as writers. Is the third person truly dead? Is omniscient narration passé? Of course, the first person present can be employed in masterful ways and produce beautiful pieces of writing. But to what extent is this shifting in literary trends of the last decades to do with lucidity of prose and storytelling, and to what extent is it related to a larger cultural shift away from more “difficult” literatures and towards simpler, more digestible ones?

I have recently been re-reading all the books that have made a lasting impact on me, and got to Flights. After a philosophy professor recommended it to me some years ago, I read it and was blown away. I am usually a fan of science- and speculative-fiction, “weird” fiction, things like Ted Chiang, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges. Flights scratched a particular itch for something wonderfully bizarre, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

I was reminded a bit of Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, as the story is sprawling and deals with numerous characters in vastly different settings, contexts, and time periods. It’s both realistic and fantastical, yet deeply philosophical.

What are your thoughts on the book and what it accomplished? Did you enjoy its particular structure, or did it make it hard to connect with the stories? What were your key takeaways and how did it make you feel? I’m curious to know what other people think of it (and her writing in general).