Concision?

The trouble with books is that they’re full of words.

I know, I know, a book is made of words, right? But when I can get through an entire book reading only the first sentence of every paragraph and not even feel I’ve missed anything, it seems time to suggest economizing. And I don’t just mean those loose baggy 19^th century monsters, either. Somehow even a contemporary 80-page novel for third graders can just be crammed full of too many words.

Apparently the world’s authors are widely suffering from an unmanageable logorrhea too often untempered by their shepherding editors.

Allow me to quote a particularly troubling passage I read last night in a published work: “he took his other hand and lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. His lovely, sad, warm, dark, impossibly deep eyes. Their color seemed to swirl and change; she couldn’t tell if they were brown or hazel or black or some new shade of dark that had no name and existed only there—here.” It’s not just the romance that’s gagging me here: it’s all those words, stuffing themselves down into my ears.

I’m not a huge fan of dieting (no puns intended), but most of the books I’ve met recently could stand to lose a few pounds of words.